Movie Review of Newsies

by Lewis Robinson

The 1992 Disney Film, Newsies celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2022. This film helped to kick off several people's careers. Since the film has come out, there have been numerous live theatrical performances. All in all, this cult classic remains a favorite of many people today.

Plot

The plot of Newsies is based on the real-life newsboy strike of 1899. At this time, newsboys needed to buy all of the newspapers they planned to sell to the general public and could not sell back any newspapers that went unsold. 

The newsboys' situation was made even worse when Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, two real-life newspaper tycoons, rose the distribution costs one cent per every ten papers. While this doesn't seem like a lot, the newsboy was usually exceptionally poor and could not afford to pay this. This inspired the newsboys to band together and form a union to fight back against the newspaper company owners. Movie lover's will need to watch the film themselves to find out how the movie ends. There are no movie spoilers in this review article.

Stars

Looking at the cast of Newsies, many famous names stand out. Some older actors, including Bill Pullman and Robert Duvall had significant roles in the film. However, since the film revolved around the lives of young newspaper boys, most of the actors were significantly younger. 

Several young actors played the newspaper boys who went on strike. However, not many of them went on to have memorable careers. However, Newsies was one of Christian Bale's first big roles. Before playing Jack Kelly in this film, he had mostly had bit parts in television shows and movies. In Newsies, he played one of the main characters, who acted much like a cowboy. Working with Dinsey on Newsies helped to open many doors for him in his career. Nowadays, he is best known for his roles in American Psycho and in one of the Batman trilogies. 

Music and Choreography

Two Disney legends, Alan Menken and Kenny Ortega created the music and dance moves in this movie. Ortega has worked with Disney for decades on their musicals. He is probably most famous for his role in creating the choreography for the High School Musical series. One thing that set the dances apart from other musicals was Ortega's use of a step ladder and stairs. These would also be used in live theatrical performances. The ladders and stairs are more noticeable in the theatrical version than in the film version. This does not take away from the overall dance moves.

Alan Menken has made most of his fame in composing music for different Disney movies, including The Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, and Tangled. When writing the music for Newsies, he had to think of what the solution selling newsboy lives were like in the late 1800s, when the film takes place. Because of this, the music has some turn-of-the-century elements that many of Menken's other compositions do not have.

Awards

Unfortunately, the 1992 movie version of Newsies only won one award, The Razzie Award for Worst Original Song for "High Times, Hard Times." The film was also nominated for other Razzies and joke awards.

Luckily, the Original Broadway productions of Newsies did much better. In 2012, Christopher Gattelli won the Tony Award for Best Choreography; Alan Menken and Jack Feldman won Best Original Score at the Tony Awards as well. Also in 2012, Christopher Gattelli won the Outstanding Choreography award and Alan Menken won the Outstanding Music Award at the Drama Desk Awards.

The Newsies 1992 movie may not have been highly received when it first came out, but it went on to become a cult classic. Without this film, the more successful live-action theatrical performances would not have been possible.