BURLESQUE

Should you plan on attending the film Burlesque this holiday season (which you should) you may spot references to such movie musicals as Cabaret, Chicago, Moulin Rouge!, and Showgirls. However, what you will not find are Nazis, murder, consumption, or rape. You will instead see basically normal people trying to lead normal lives. This isn't to say the stakes aren't high. Cher is about to lose her burlesque club and Christina Aguilera must find her way in the jungle that is Los Angeles (no small task if you ask me). This isn't also to say that these basically normal people aren't a lively and somewhat subversive bunch. After all, they work at Cher's club and are part of its brooding underworld. It isn't until Christina opens her mouth and starts wailing away does the club get a taste of mainstream popularity, something that doesn't fly well with everyone. Mid-western slut with mutant lungs, Kristin Bell seethes. Ha! You gotta give kudos to this zinger well-aimed at the film's star.

This brings me to writer and director Steven Antin. One-liners abound in his screenplay, which moves along at a very snappy pace, getting down to the business of plot and character development whenever it gets a chance. It would be easy to quip about the believability of certain plot points in Burlesque. Of course any club that spends that much money on its production values would end up in the red! And how do you really go from lip-syncing songs onstage to singing live without decent amplification these days? But Ms. Aguilera literally shoves concerns like these aside when she knocks over the microphone stand she's been lip-syncing behind to let her "mutant lungs" loose on the club's unsuspecting audience and staff. Hollywood cliche? One of many in Burlesque, but skeptics be damned. This is a musical. Got it?

The device pays off in spades. Not only does the film refuse to apologize for every moment stolen from another source, it unabashedly gives each of those moments new life. Relying on the talents of its very capable cast, Burlesque surprises at every turn, finding authenticity and truth in its characters and the actors portraying them. Cher's big ballad mid-way through provides sublime catharsis to her culminating woes. And Christina's big ballad, modeled directly after Cabaret's "Maybe This Time," lends tremendous weight to her character's first-love fears. Stanley Tucci levels out any bumps in the road by simply keeping things real, and Alan Cumming ups the ante by simply being himself. Peter Gallagher, as Cher's financially tortured ex & partner in business, is also effective. Even Babs' hubby makes a cameo to round out the diva connection.

I do not know where Christina Aguilera has been learning to act, but her effortless conviction could easily land her a viable movie career, side-swiping Lady GaGa's hijacking of pop culture as we know it. (Ms. Aguilera also executive produces the pulsing Burlesque soundtrack, to maximum effect.)

STUD ALERT!!!: Cam Gigandet, who plays Christina's roommate-turned-love interest, is head-spinningly hot, especially when he's wearing all that eye-liner. He can be in every single movie I see from now till the day I die.

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