‘West Side Story’ review: Steven Spielberg has crafted a ‘West Side Story’ better than the ‘61 movie, a real Hollywood musical
Purists can relax, and put their smelling salts away. The vibrant new “West Side Story” hasn’t been updated, or relocated.
It’s still a resident of Upper West Side Manhattan in the late 1950s, in the vicinity of what used to be called Lincoln Square and San Juan Hill. But director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner have made sharp, often arresting sense of original librettist Arthur Laurents’ material, born on Broadway in 1957. Jerome Robbins’ dances helped make the Broadway musical a prestige success; the score by Leonard Bernstein and a newcomer named Stephen Sondheim didn’t hurt, either. The 1961 movie, dutiful, square and pretty dull as cinema though full of performance
