The Under 700 Club: Stop the World: I Want to Get Off (1966)
I've been L-U-M-B-E-R-E-D.
The Under 700 Club: Reviews in under 700 words for movies with less than 700 logs on Letterboxd (log count as of this publication: 96)
Movies are highlighted in this column for a variety of reasons: to celebrate certain holidays, to highlight tv movies as movies just the same, or maybe to review a new Blu-ray release. But there's always been one movie, since the inception of this series, that I knew I would write about one day - one of the most underrated musicals I know, Stop the World: I Want to Get Off.
Many years ago, I stumbled upon a since-deleted clip from Stop the World on YouTube, what I remember to be the first five or ten minutes of the movie. It was so bizarre, yet oddly charming (as the weirdest of British culture always seems to be), and I felt compelled to track it down from just the one clip. I quickly bought the Warner Archive DVD on eBay for what was probably a stupid amount of money, but it was worth the joy it has given me over the years.
Stop the World tells the cradle-to-grave story of Littlechap, an Everyman in the world, a regular mime in his circus-set story. As a youngster*, he's a bit of an odd duck. As an adult, he's a no-mark, falling flat with birds and stuck in a menial job. When he (unluckily, he believes) impregnates his boss's daughter, they have a shotgun wedding and his now father-in-law throws him a financial bone, which results in a better job at the factory. Unsatisfied with his plain and regular life, he begins to seek fulfillment outside of his house and his marriage.
*The previously-mentioned YouTube video was of Littlechap going to Kindergarten, where he sings the alphabet to a different tune than the one you or I grew up with, reciting "abcdefg...hijklmnop...q.r.s.t.u.v.W.X.Y...zed." It has completely replaced the traditional "ABC Song" in my head because I watched the clip so many times.
The musical, which debuted in 1961, was written by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, best known for their work on the 1971 Willy Wonka film. Once you know that, that's all you can hear - they have an overly-rhymey, ba-dum ba-dum style that's like if Pasek & Paul were British, from the '60s, and not total hacks. To me, the songs are secondary to the satire at play, which is basically all about how men suck and how they can't enjoy life's pleasures, like a beautiful wife and family, without trying to self-sabotage it in some way.
Newley directed and starred as Littlechap in the original West End and Broadway productions, but the part is played by Tony Tanner in the film, which is basically just what we would now call a pro-shot. Tanner is delightful despite the challenge of playing an unlikeable knobhead, and I really get a kick out of the fact that (even on the DVD's crappy quality), the white mime makeup covers up his eyebrows about as well as it covered up Cesar Romero's mustache in Batman. Millicent Martin plays his wife, as well as all of his side-pieces in a clever bit of stage business, and she's a total catch in all of them - even when she has to, unfortunately, play a stereotypical Japanese character.
Spoilers in this paragraph only: In the stage show, Littlechap gets a redemption arc at the end when he offers his life in place of his future grandson's, crawling out to play the baby in a cyclically thematic moment. That never happens here. I kinda like that in this movie he just sings, "What I Fool Am I?," acknowledging that he's always been a jerk but learning nothing from it.
Sammy Davis Jr., in a bit of casting I don't quite understand, played the character in a handful of productions in the '70s, Newley reprised his character in a poorly-received '80s revival, and Peter Scolari played the part in a '96 television production that doesn't seem to exist on video anymore. Absolutely zero theatre companies would touch this deep-cut title with a ten-foot pole, so if you don't live close enough to borrow my Original Broadway Cast LP (you can listen to it on the couch that sits under my poster for the film), you'll have to catch this one on DVD.
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