A remake can't be a facsimile and this is both faithful to the vintage film, while adding new elements - not just casting - to the whole piece. The elements we all know and are essential for it to remain the work are all there although some songs are not present.
The cast are all fine and some innovations especially around Moreno's role are seamless updates. Some reviewers have queried Elgort as Tony and while there are some shaky moments, the actual role is problematic, which is difficult for an actor. Tony we are told is a bad dude, but all we see, until the climax, is an earnest lovelorn kid, a musical stereotype. It's an idealization role, almost like Candide, a part that Bernstein knew well enough in that work which makes it rather awkward.
The craft in this movie is to make a movie that has musical sections, not a genuine musical in that tradition which somehow hangs together through the tunes, however patchily dramatically it coheres. The difference in motivation is evident in the extended scenes and the additional dialogue which add very little to the original and pad out for a contemporary audience such notions that need more explanation. It is also seen in the disjunctive nature of time and space which pervades the film.
The most egregious instance of that is in the signature song, ''America''. As a huge singular sequence this comment may seem just plain wrong but in the drama, "America" comes after another sour encounter between the gangs and the Puerto Ricans are seething about life in America. The men have their pride but the women remind them it's one of poverty, and so caught between two rotten choices, the women make the case for staying. (In the stage version it is women only but, being Hollywood, they had to give the men something to do.)In the original film the sequence is at night, and confined to a small space which is like a battlefield; the women dance at the men in waves of attack and every good proposition the women offer, the men reject. It is antagonistic and full of irony.
In this remake, by comparison, "America" is set the next day and is separated by time from the mix-dance, which had created the tension that leads to the expression through ''America''.
In this version it is morning, the Puerto Rican women gather from their apartments into the street and dance with their men, and they jeer and tease each other, as they dance along many New York blocks ending in grand finale with children joining the street chorines.
The sequence lacks bite and sneer and has lost its street battle setting as well as understanding of the song itself which pitches between two awful realities: poverty in Puerto Rico and racism in New York. The dancing children are enough to induce severe gastric reflux. Despite its sweep and grandeur, or rather because of it, the sequence is inane and disappointing.
There is no doubt that Arthur Laurents, who wrote the original book, would not like this film, but he disliked the 1961 film too, mainly for the actors and the unreality of real locations and musical theater conventions.
That aside, all things considered, it is pleasing enough, even if being new is not concordantly better.
The cast are all fine and some innovations especially around Moreno's role are seamless updates. Some reviewers have queried Elgort as Tony and while there are some shaky moments, the actual role is problematic, which is difficult for an actor. Tony we are told is a bad dude, but all we see, until the climax, is an earnest lovelorn kid, a musical stereotype. It's an idealization role, almost like Candide, a part that Bernstein knew well enough in that work which makes it rather awkward.
The craft in this movie is to make a movie that has musical sections, not a genuine musical in that tradition which somehow hangs together through the tunes, however patchily dramatically it coheres. The difference in motivation is evident in the extended scenes and the additional dialogue which add very little to the original and pad out for a contemporary audience such notions that need more explanation. It is also seen in the disjunctive nature of time and space which pervades the film.
The most egregious instance of that is in the signature song, ''America''. As a huge singular sequence this comment may seem just plain wrong but in the drama, "America" comes after another sour encounter between the gangs and the Puerto Ricans are seething about life in America. The men have their pride but the women remind them it's one of poverty, and so caught between two rotten choices, the women make the case for staying. (In the stage version it is women only but, being Hollywood, they had to give the men something to do.)In the original film the sequence is at night, and confined to a small space which is like a battlefield; the women dance at the men in waves of attack and every good proposition the women offer, the men reject. It is antagonistic and full of irony.
In this remake, by comparison, "America" is set the next day and is separated by time from the mix-dance, which had created the tension that leads to the expression through ''America''.
In this version it is morning, the Puerto Rican women gather from their apartments into the street and dance with their men, and they jeer and tease each other, as they dance along many New York blocks ending in grand finale with children joining the street chorines.
The sequence lacks bite and sneer and has lost its street battle setting as well as understanding of the song itself which pitches between two awful realities: poverty in Puerto Rico and racism in New York. The dancing children are enough to induce severe gastric reflux. Despite its sweep and grandeur, or rather because of it, the sequence is inane and disappointing.
There is no doubt that Arthur Laurents, who wrote the original book, would not like this film, but he disliked the 1961 film too, mainly for the actors and the unreality of real locations and musical theater conventions.
That aside, all things considered, it is pleasing enough, even if being new is not concordantly better.