Glee: The 3D Concert Movie

Comments (0) By Nick Schager Wednesday, Aug 10 2011

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Glee: The 3D Concert Movie
Directed by Kevin Tanchareon
20th Century Fox
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Following in the live-film footsteps of Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers, Glee: The 3D Concert Movie transposes its flash-in-the-pan teen-pop phenomenon to three-dimensions with mundane, for-fans-only results. Kevin Tancharoen's energetic document of the popular Fox comedy's 2011 spin-off tour (culled from two East Rutherford, NJ performances) is chockablock with the series' cheery karaoke, delivering blandly choreographed renditions of crowd-pleaser tunes already featured on the program, from "Don't Stop Believing" and "Born This Way" to "Jessie's Girl" and "Forget You," the last of these courtesy of a cameoing Gwyneth Paltrow. Glee's radio top 40-pilfering musical schizophrenia is exacerbated by this stage show, which zigzags wildly from bubblegum rock to R&B to Barbra Streisand, along the way producing a few inappropriate moments such as bad girl Britney's sexualized rendition of "I'm a Slave 4 U" mere moments after a shot of a cheery adolescent audience member. Interwoven into the song-and-dance footage are paltry backstage snippets of the cast as well as cursory real-life stories of fans (a cheerleading dwarf, a gay high-schooler, a girl with Asperger's Syndrome) that underline Glee's be-yourself-and-be-proud empowerment ethos. Toss in irrelevant 3D effects, and it’s merely a trivial footnote to the popular franchise—though one that will no doubt satisfy rabid gleeks