Bugsy Malone (Special Edition) (DVD)

I suppose every person's childhood has certain defining moments, whether it's the first time you heard a particular song, a day out in the park, or perhaps when your favourite video got recorded over with some history programme about castles, (not that I'm bitter or anything).

One such moment for me was 'Bugsy Malone', a movie that had songs, gangsters, pedal powered cars, plenty of food fights and, most notably, a cast that was played ...
...When you're nine or ten years old, it looks like an awful lot of fun!

~~~ About The Movie ~~~
'Bugsy Malone' was originally released in 1976 and was written and directed by Alan Parker, with music by Paul Williams. Now would probably be a good time to mention that if you're not a fan of musicals, 'Bugsy Malone' is one you should probably avoid like the plague. If however you’re like me and you don't mind people bursting into ... more

I suppose every person's childhood has certain defining moments, whether it's the first time you heard a particular song, a day out in the park, or perhaps when your favourite video got recorded over with some history programme about castles, (not that I'm bitter or anything).

One such moment for me was 'Bugsy Malone', a movie that had songs, gangsters, pedal powered cars, plenty of food fights and, most notably, a cast that was played entirely by kids, with an average age of twelve. When you're nine or ten years old, it looks like an awful lot of fun!

~~~ About The Movie ~~~
'Bugsy Malone' was originally released in 1976 and was written and directed by Alan Parker, with music by Paul Williams. Now would probably be a good time to mention that if you're not a fan of musicals, 'Bugsy Malone' is one you should probably avoid like the plague. If however you’re like me and you don't mind people bursting into song periodically throughout the movie, 'Bugsy Malone' has plenty to offer.

It follows the main character, the man 'everybody loves', Busgy Malone, who is somewhat of a drifter, going from 'this and that' trying to earn an honest buck, mainly by finding potential boxers, although occasionally doing work for the likes of Fat Sam, the boss of a mafia gang. Fat Sam runs a 'book store', which is actually just a front for his speakeasy, the hub of Sam's empire. It's at Fat Sam's that we meet the majority of the other main characters, such as Tallulah, the lead performer at the speakeasy as well as being Sam's girl, and Blousey Brown, an aspiring singer who dreams of making it to Hollywood someday.

When a rival of Fat Sam's, Dandy Dan, begins trying to muscle in on his 'turf', Sam has to fight back to protect his empire - cue plenty of flying whipped cream.

The style of the movie is very tongue-in-cheek. Although in essence this is a very adult-themed movie, dealing with gangsters and the sort of underbelly of society, the themes have been significantly toned down and are treated in a light-hearted and often comical manner - hence the use of ‘splurge-guns’ which fires a sort of custard/cream as 'weapons', rather than actual guns. Other themes that you might expect if it were a real gangster movie are altered just enough to render them both harmless and fun and speaking from what I remember of my experience watching the movie, I was too busy enjoying the food fights and wanting a pedal-powered car to consider the ‘reality’ of mob-life. I think the movie’s U rating is perfectly adequate and there’s nothing in the movie that would have a negative effect on children.
Even though the movie is largely targeted towards kids, there's still plenty entertainment value in there for adults as well.

Surprisingly, for such as young cast, the acting is actually fairly good. Don't get me wrong, there are obviously flakey moments here and there, but I think that's to be expected. Overall, the abilities of everyone involved are of a high enough standard to engage the viewer in the story. Whilst the plot is fairly simple, it is structured reasonably well and I thought the pace of the movie was fitting and when coupled with the acting and an entertaining script, it adds up to pretty engaging movie that should certain hold the attention of younger children, but equally adults shouldn’t find themselves becoming bored or disinterested by the movie’s simple style.

For me, one of the greatest aspects of the movie is the music. 'Bugsy Malone' was the first time I encountered Paul Williams as a composer, but he's become one of my personal favourite musicians and songwriters since, having done some acting and music for various movies, notably 'Phantom Of The Paradise' and several Muppet movies.
The songs are both catchy and enjoyable to listen to and I personally enjoy them away from the movie.
Some might criticise the fact that the songs are actually sung by adults and then lip-synched by the actors. Personally, I don’t have a problem with it, since there are plenty of musicals where the singing-voice is not actually the actor’s and I don’t think it really detracts anything from the songs or movie as a whole. It might seem a little disjointed, Bugsy’s singing voice is particularly out of place compared to Scott Baio’s, but I don’t think anyone would feel cheated by it at the end of the day.

A mention has to go to the choreography, which is first rate. I especially enjoyed the scene that accompanies the song ‘Bad Guys’, which is one that always stuck in my mind as child and still makes me chuckle to this day.

~~~ # "We could've been anything that we wanted to be..." ~~~
It was decided to cast American actors for the lead roles, but with a predominantly British line-up for the support. When the film was made the cast were all relatively unknown. Scott Baio played the role of Bugsy, whilst Jodie Foster, (who was one of the few cast-members who had previous movie experience) was Tallulah. These two have probably are probably the most successful since the movie. I think Foster shows exactly why she went on to become such a successful actress and, perhaps rather unsurprisingly, she delivers one of the strongest performances of everyone involved.
John Cassisi, who played Fat Sam, went on to star in a couple of TV series, but didn't do much beyond 'Bugsy Malone'. He manages to play the angry, down-but-not-quite-out mob boss character with enough intimidation to make him believable, but at the same time with enough humour that he doesn’t alienate the audience.
Florrie Dugger plays Blousey and, for me at least, is the weak link in the main cast. That’s not to say she’s terrible in the role, but I thought at times she didn’t look comfortable onscreen and perhaps that’s the reason she didn’t go onto do any other acting work after the movie.
Strangely, there are some minor parts that were played by people that later went on to have successful acting careers. Anyone who is a fan of 'The Bill' will undoubtedly recognise Andrew Paul as O'Dreary, who went on to play P.C. Quinnan in the TV series. Equally, a very young Dexter Fletcher, (Baby Face) is currently staring in Hotel Babylon as Tony, the head concierge.

For the vast majority of the cast, 'Busgy Malone' is the only performance they ever did and most went back to their normal lives.

~~~ The DVD ~~~
This particular edition of the movie comes on one disc that features both the movie and the special features. It also includes a booklet, written by Alan Parker.

The menu is interactive and has been well thought-out, being not only easy to find your way around but also quite eye-catching. I like the way that the DVD menus tie in with the overall theme and style of the DVD, (such as its front cover, booklet) and I think it shows that an effort has been made to make this ‘Special Edition’ a little, well, “special”.

The Special Features are: -

- Director’s Commentary by Alan Parker
- Promotional Trailers
- Character Biographies
- Photo Gallery
- Art Gallery
- ‘From Sketch To Screen’ Feature
- Trivia Notes

On the whole the bonus material is of a high standard, but its’ appeal is very much down to personal preference. I’m not one for trailers, but I was surprised that these were a little more enjoyable that other’s I’ve seen because of the introductions by characters before showing the clips from the movie.
The Character Biographies are quite amusing to read, since the way the biographies are writing is both humorous and enjoyable to read, but on top of this you learn a little bit more about some of the characters. Equally, the actually layout of the screen is quite stylish and I especially like the design of the front menu for this feature.
Some of the other material is a little more mixed and whilst not all of it’s to my personal taste, I think it probably holds some value for some viewers. The Photo and Art galleries the Photo Gallery show still, black-and-white images that were taken on set during the filming, whilst the Art Gallery are comic-style interpretations that are interesting, but both are relatively short and perhaps are only of interest in watching once.

‘From Sketch To Screen’ allows you to view the initial story-board’s made by Alan Parker, a comic-strip style version of the movie, or the movie itself with the two placed alongside for comparison. This isn’t personally one of my favourite features, but it’s still of a good enough quality that it’s not unpleasant to watch.

The ‘Director’s Commentary’ is quite interesting, though if you’re not a fan of watching movies with commentaries then there’s nothing special here to change your mind. For people who are interested in this sort of thing there are some interesting insights from behind the scenes, pre-production etc., that fans of the movie might find enjoyable to learn.

I found the booklet particularly interesting, since it details how ‘Bugsy Malone’ came about and some of the highs and lows of producing a movie of this nature. It’s nice having a little more details ‘behind-the-scenes’ and I found this to be an interesting and occasionally insightful read.

~~~ Conclusion ~~~
It’s very difficult for me to find anything I would criticise about the movie whole-heartedly. I will concede that people who dislike musicals, or can’t stomach movies with children as lead-characters probably won’t enjoy ‘Bugsy Malone’ – though I would dispute the argument ‘it’s just a bunch of kids’, but maybe that’s just me. If you’re indifferent to these sorts of things, then I think you’ll at least feel it’s an entertaining enough way of spending 89 minutes of your time.
For people who are already fans, this is a worth while DVD since the bonus material is enjoyable, well laid-out and on the whole interesting to watch, with at least a couple of items that should be of interest.

Given that you can pick this up relatively cheap from Amazon, I would say it's good value for money - all in all, I would highly recommend. 

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