Talk:List of musical films by year

Breaking down by year

I'm not quite sure why only the 1990s and 2000s lists are broken down by year. They all should be. So who wants to volunteer? 23skidoo 18:43, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I guess that would be me, then! ;-) 23skidoo 22:43, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Setting a criteria

As I was reorganizing the page (see above) I noted (and removed) a number of titles that really weren't musicals. There may have been rock songs on the soundtrack, but you didn't see anyone actually performing or doing dancing, or what have you. There are also a few films listed that really had only one musical moment -- I'm thinking of Not Another Teen Movie and Team America World Police, both of which have one song each, played for laughs. I think ther e should be a criteria established for listing films here. My suggestion would be that music should be a major part of the film, and the movie should have at least 2 musical numbers to qualify. There are a couple of Garland/Rooney Andy Hardy films that don't qualify because they just do one song. Several Elvis films similarly don't count because Elvis just sings the title track over the credits and nothing else. Thoughts? 23skidoo 01:13, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

As a follow-up question, what about made-for-TV movies and short films? I've seen a few TV movies added to the list but in my additions I have intentionally avoided them for now. 23skidoo 02:49, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

A lot of these musicals probably aren't musicals. Before Chicago, I had never once seen a musical in a movie theater. But to look at this list, it's as if musicals have never stopped being popular. Perhaps this page should be seperated into: Animated Musicals, Movies with one song (and is on a stage and really happening), Movies with a pop song sung as background music (probably shouldn't be on this list), Hollywood musicals (so you know it's not some movie that was shown in a single theater), Non- Hollywood ( Bollywood doesn't seem on this list), and other (movies that were shown n screen).

A question

Why were Chicken Little and Meet The Robinsons taken off the list?

Category

The musical film entry states in its first paragraph "The musical film is a film genre in which several songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative. The songs are used to advance the plot or develop the film's characters. A subgenre of the musical film is the musical comedy, which includes a strong element of humour as well as the usual music, dancing and storyline" Many of the films in this list clearly do not fit that criteria. Which is correct, the list or the entry? The two seem to be at odds at the moment. Cheers Deckchair (talk) 19:22, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

• You are correct, there are a lot of films on here that should not be on here. Step Up and Take the Lead for example are NOT musicals. They are dance films sure, but nowhere in it does a character sing a song that is part of the narrative. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.169.250.38 (talk) 12:26, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Concert films

Do films such as The Last Waltz and Woodstock belong on this list? I'd argue that they don't. Will be happy to take a pass at removing a bunch of other performance documentaries like this if anyone doesn't object.PacificBoy 00:26, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

The more I got looking at this page, the more the whole concert thing was starting to bug me, so I was bold and started stripping them out.PacificBoy 01:35, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Do the 10th and 25th Anniversary Concerts of Les Miserables fall under this category? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.165.18.228 (talk) 06:56, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Additional categories for exclusion

Okay, so beyond my issue with the concert films, I'd like to propose removing some of the following:

• Bollywood films (there are only a handful here, and if we open the floodgates, there will be a gazillion to add.
• Movies in which the action is accompanied by music, not sung by the characters (i.e. Saturday Night Fever)
• Movies in which the characters do sing, but only in the idiom of a performance. I've already taken out many biopics that fit this criteria, such as Coal Miner's Daughter.
• Made-for-TV or direct-to-video animated films shorter than feature length (i.e. the stray Winnie the Pooh titles)

Any thoughts?PacificBoy 01:35, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes. I've made a large number of edits recently to remove titles that I don't believe are musicals. I agree with removing movies that are concert footage or documentaries. I also agree with removing movies where the characters sing in the context of depicting a performance. As well as biopics, I included portrayals of fictional musicians (e.g. All You Need is Cash, Velvet Goldmine, Hustle & Flow) or semi-fictional ones (e.g. 8 mile, The Rose). This type of movie usually has the same musician(s) performing all the songs, as opposed to songs sung by characters who otherwise aren't musicians in the movie.

In my opinion, it doesn't count if the characters are musicians and are performing as part of the plot. Musicals are movies where the characters often bust out in song for no apparent reason, abandoning dialogue for song in advancing the plot. I used my intuition rather than a definition. To misquote Justice Potter Stewart, "I know it when I hate it".

If there's disagreement with the edits, I hope they're not reversed en masse, but rather that editors take the time, as I did, to consider each edit on its own merits. Willondon (talk) 01:45, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

A good start might be to agree that a "musical" is not simply a movie that has a lot of music in it. I think the best criterion is a movie that changes the narrative mode from dialogue to song at some point. I can accept Monty Python's The Meaning of Life as a musical because characters do bust out into song, even though it plays a very small role as a narrative device. On the other hand, I removed Neil Young: Heart of Gold. Seriously?

You're right. A consensus on definition of a musical is seriously needed. I admit to editing this page as a hater of musicals, but surely those who appreciate musicals can't be happy either with such a dilution of the term. Willondon (talk) 05:25, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

I would be careful with removing movies "where the characters sing in the context of depicting a performance". "Sound of Music" is clearly considered a musical and most if not all of the musical numbers in it are actually musical perfomrances for the characters and no not necessarily move the plot ahead. 204.124.67.250 (talk) 19:38, 10 June 2015 (UTC)