How can I adore music and film yet despise musicals?

[tellmewhentheLangshiplandscoz]

Evening all

I have loved music since as long as I can remember. I'm 40+ now and remember from age 8 onwards being overjoyed with a stack of records then CDs for every birthday and Christmas and I'd listen to them until they wore out and learn every lyric off by heart. I'd daydream constantly to music and all,of my memories in life, good and bad, have a soundtrack, if that makes sense?

Ditto films. Adore getting lost in a great film. Bonus points if it's a film with a great soundtrack.

But I can't watch musical, film or stage, without my butt cheeks clenching at the horror of it. I just don't understand how I can enjoy the two elements separately but think if rather poke my own eyes out than watch a musical. When I tell people this they look at me as if I'd announced I love kicking kittens.

I've been enjoying the crazy nonsense that is Riverdale recently with DDut suddenly that's gone all bloody jazz hands

Please say it's not just me? What's wrong with me that I get such a visceral reaction

I love music of most kinds but find musicals dull as shit.I've tried to like them but I just get bored. I like a film or live show that keeps me engaged and intrigued with clever plots and I guess most musicals don't have that as they rely on the songs as the main part of the storyline. Just my opinion.

@AffIt

My sister feels the same way about opera - loves the theatre, loves music, but thinks opera is 'doing two things at once, neither of them very well'.

(I love both opera and musicals, for what it's worth.)

That's exactly how I used to feel about it and I just couldn't suspend disbelief in white Italian singers playing fifteen year old Japanese brides or the tenor playing Alfredo in La Traviata being visibly a decade older than the baritone playing his father plus I also felt that putting the staging/acting with the singing and orchestra was just way too much. Then I suddenly got it, for reasons I still don't quite understand!

I am with you op!

Cameron Mackintosh has a lot to answer for imho!

Can't stand Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Les Mis etc ...

I agree with pp that the quality of the music is very poor.

Rogers and Hammerstein productions were imho so much better in every way!

Extract from Wikipedia:
"Mackintosh this known for transforming the musical into a global, highly profitable brand, and was the first theatrical producer to recognise that both touring productions and worldwide productions (often in countries where musicals were seldom seen, such as the former eastern bloc countries in the early 90s) were potentially highly lucrative markets which could, collectively, match and even surpass the revenues generated from New York and London productions."

^^ I think this is the basic problem. The commodification of the arts!

@tellmewhentheLangshiplandscoz my username is inspired by a muppet show performance!

The worst culprits are the musicals where there is no speaking at all and a normal sentence is ridiculously song in what appears to be any old chuffing tune.

This^ (Thinking of Les Mis in particular) I don't mind some of the film musicals like the Sound of Music but musical theatre is my idea of hell. DD is obsessed with Hamilton, plays it all the time - I can't stand it, two of my least favourite things, musical theatre and rap.