8 Must-Watch Movie Musicals For Any Good Millennial or Gen Z Gay

Tragedy Tomorrow, Comedy Tonight!

If you’ve even been casually reading my articles, you’ve probably quickly figured out that I am decidedly “a theatre gay.” So much so that I insist on spelling it “theatre.” The closest thing I have to religion is live theatre, but particularly musical theatre. Within the first five minutes of almost every musical I see, I am in full tears. I’m always so profoundly touched that I’m being given this gift; that I live in a moment where I get to experience such beauty amidst what is very often a lot of chaos. Many a studio has attempted to recreate the magic of the musical on the silver screen, but very few (most?) have knocked it out of the park. Some should have been incredible, but were misses (I see you Producers), others had wonderful first installments, but missed the boat on the sequels (*coughs* Mama Mia!), and yet others defied and re-defined the medium (all hail, Chicago). Here’s a run-down of the 8 movie musicals that every good gay should see at least once.

Up first is the movie that changed everything: Chicago. Before Chicago, even the most amazing movie musical was by and large a bit saccharine. They were pretty, they were sometimes well-choreographed, but they were by and large very “neat.” Chicago came around and said fuck your norms, we’re going to do this musical the way it’s supposed to be done. It honored the grit of Bob Fosse’s original, and perfectly married stage sets with film locations. Starring a very pregnant (though unnoticeably so) Catherine Zeta Jones in a Best Supporting Actress Oscar-winning performance and Renee Zellweger in an Oscar-nominated performance as the two leading ladies, Chicago also shines a glorious light on Queen Latifah and John C. Reilly, both in Oscar-nominated performances. Richard Gere looks sexy as ever as slick lawyer Billy Flynn, and he tap dances. Also in a small role is darling of Broadway, TV, and film alike, Taye Diggs. The movie won six Academy Awards including Best Picture, and set the proverbial stage for all movie musicals that followed. Before Chicago's 2002 Oscar win, the last musical to win Best Picture was Oliver in 1968! If you haven’t seen Chicago yet, watch it ASAP (*whispers* but make sure you skip the current production on Broadway, because oof is it stale).

Next up on this must-see list is the first movie to completely shake up the medium, 1972’s Cabaret. Starring Queer icon Liza Minelli in an Oscar-winning turn as Sally Bowles, as well as fellow Queer icon and real-life homo, Joel Grey, also in an Oscar-winning role as the Emcee, Cabaret scooped up a whopping eight Academy Awards, with an additional two nominations (Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay...but to be fair the other big movie that year was The Godfather). The movie was gritty; it was profoundly sexual; it decried the Nazi’s; and it was the perfect example of art teaching us about the human condition amidst horrible world circumstances. I just re-watched Cabaret recently, and my god does it hold up. Also, not for nothing, I will literally watch anything Michael York is in. That man always understands the assignment and always fucking delivers.  I would, however, love to see a stage production where the Emcee is played by a big bear in suspenders and no shirt, smoking a cigar, since we’ve played out the lithe twink approach. Give us an even grittier Cabaret!

But before the medium was being completely redefined, there was a medium that needed redefining (in my opinion). What were the really stellar musicals of days past that defined Old Hollywood? Which films kicked ass then and remain timeless now? No better example than 1944’s Meet Me In St. Louis, starring the OG “friend of Dorothy”, Dorothy herself, Judy Garland as Esther Smith. Meet Me In St. Louis told the story of a beautiful young woman and her love of “the boy next door.” The supporting cast is also outstanding, with forever screen queen, Mary Astor as the mother, Anna Smith. Meet Me In St. Louis also includes some of the biggest earworms in movie musical history, including “The Trolley Song” (Clang, Clang, Clang Went the Trolley). Though we expect movies to be in color in 2022, back in the '40s it was still very exciting. And this whole film explodes with vibrant colors that transport you to the “simpler time” we all seem to chase. It’s got Dorothy, it’s got vibrant costumes, it’s got songs about trolley’s, it was directed by Vincent Minnelli and its where he and Judy fell in love and created Liza…if this movie musical were any gayer, we’d need another letter on the LGBTQ+ acronym just to represent it.

After Jonathan Larson’s generation-defining musical RENT, the world took note of him and started exploring his earlier work. Thankfully, this year saw the long-prophesized film adaptation of Larson’s early musical, tick, tick...BOOM!, starring Andrew Garfield and directed by Lin Manuel Miranda. TTB! is the biopic of the real-life Larson as he tries to get his musical off the ground. It was so outstanding that I watched it twice consecutively, and have watched it another bunch of times since. As wishy washy as I often am about Andrew Garfield and how he relates to the Queer community, he was, pure and simple, outstanding in this movie. He was raw, he was hilarious, he sung like a dream, and he moved like an angel. It also co-stars the unfathomably sexy and talented Robin DeJesus, as well as Judith Light as agent Rosa Stevens, and Bradley Whitford as the king himself, Stephen Sondheim. I would say “keep an eye out for some other major cameos,” but let’s just say they’re impossible to miss. In one absolutely stunning sequence called “Sunday,” the film honor’s Sondheim’s iconic scene from Sunday In the Park With George in a brunch vignette and has cameos from Bebe Neuwirth, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Andre DeShields, Joel Grey, Phylicia Rashad, Bernadette Peters, Chita Rivera, and tons more. If you’re a creative soul in your 30s and you love musical theatre, tick, tick...BOOM! is definitely required viewing.

It’s impossible to discuss tick, tick...BOOM! without also acknowledging RENT.  The rock musical didn’t only change musical theatre, but it inarguably changed the world. It welcomed into the fray an entirely new generation of theatre lovers, particularly those of us who were starting to feel like the old world wasn’t quite working out for many of us. RENT challenged our understandings of art, capitalism, friendship, AIDS, and the very medium it embodied, musical theatre. The long-awaited movie version finally came out in 2005, almost a full decade after the show made its 1996 Broadway debut. When my family and I first saw the movie adaptation (which has almost the exact same cast as the OBC), we all thoroughly enjoyed it, but just didn’t think it captured the magic of the musical the way we wanted it to. Maybe they were all too old to be playing themselves a decade younger? Maybe the clearly studio location felt a little too produced? Whatever it was it just didn’t quite hit right for me, but was thoroughly delightful nonetheless. And then 15 years later the world collapsed in a Pandemic. I re-watched RENT two years ago this week when the world first shut down, and in that moment I was transported back to 1996. I was a kid again, and RENT was hitting just the right way I needed it to; I loved every second of it. The movie version of RENT is definitely ideal if you’ve never seen the musical. The score somehow feels even more relevant today than it did two decades ago and I think this is one where you should actually see the movie first before then going to see the live musical.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably been in countless high school and college productions of various classic properties. Most of us have done Anything Goes; a number of us have done Grease; and who hasn't done Bye, Bye, Birdie? It’s just the way world works. And one such musical many of us have done is the great successor to the sexual decadence of Cabaret, 1975’s cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Rocky Horror (as it’s known to most) is one of the Queerest, most depraved, and utterly hilarious movie musicals ever made. To describe the plot would be foolish, because it’s an absolute mind-fuck, but let’s just say it involves a sexy man created in a lab, orgies, and cross-dressing, bi-sexual aliens, just to name a few. The film stars Tim Curry as the maniacal and murderous transvestite Dr. Frankenfurter, Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick as young couple Janet Weiss and Brad Majors respectively, and co-stars Richard O’Brien, who wrote the movie, as well. He plays the wiry Riff Raff, and sings in a vocal range that nearly destroyed my voice when I played the role in college. Definitely watch this movie, and if you’re ever in a movie theater or stage theater that is playing it make sure you bring some slices of toast (you’ll thank me later).

Some movie musicals are absolute brilliant silliness, and when the phrase “brilliant silliness” is uttered, one name immediately leaps to mind: Mel Brooks. Brooks is the Father of brilliant and satire movie musicals, and was another person whose work changed not only the industry, but also the world–and decidedly changed my life. He shook shit up at exactly the time when it needed to be shaken up. What better way to do that than to write a movie musical that covers the history of the world? What should this movie musical be called? Oh fuck it, let’s just call it what it is: A History of the World: Part 1. The 1981 movie stars Brooks’ regular cast of geniuses in the forms of Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, Cloris Leachman, Dom DeLuise, Gregory Hines, and Brooks himself, just to name a few. While the movie isn’t a “musical movie” the way we think of one today, it is movie with a ton of musical numbers/sequences in it, so in my gay mind is counts. History of The World: Part 1 features a song showing the invention singing, Kahn sings a song to a group of potential eunuchs, and, of course, the famous song and dance covering the history of the Spanish Inquisition. You may be asking yourself, “If there’s a Part 1, then surely there’s a Part 2, right?” You’d be right to ask this, but alas, no there is no Part 2. Yet. It was announced last year that Amazon Studios will be producing the long-awaited sequel, A History of the World: Part 2, written and produced by Brooks, and co-written by Nick Kroll. There’s a lot of shitty history to recap in the last 40 years, and I trust few people more to handle it than Mel Brooks.

Finally…who invented this medium I’ve grown to love so much? What were movie musicals like in the early days, the days before color and fresh after sound was fully introduced? Worth taking a look at if only for purely historical reasons is the very first movie musical, 1929’s The Desert Song. There were certainly movies with music prior to this, but this was the first time a major studio created a movie where the songs that were sung could be heard in real-time by the viewer, while also telling a full story. It should be noted that MGM’s Broadway Melody made it to the screen first, but this movie was the first one made, and was also a real story (versus the musical review that was Broadway Melody). The movie is based on the 1926 stage musical of the same name, and Warner Brothers went full-in for Desert Song spending a whopping $554,000 (the equivalent of $5.5 million today) on the production. They also brought in an even more whopping $3,000,000+ in box office revenue (almost $50,000,000 today). The style of singing is very “of the time,” but within that construct are some really gorgeous voices, including Myrna Loy as Azuri. It’s also worth noting that this movie features a clearly gay character in the form of Johnny Arthur’s Benny Kidd. This movie falls into what is known as the “Pre-Code” Era of Hollywood. The early days of film were sexual, debaucherous, and queer as fuck. But once America leaned in to its puritanical bullshit in 1935 this movie’s accessibility became almost impossible.

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