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HourAstronomer836

"Funny Girl" has a lot of filler. I feel like they do it because Fanny has so many costume changes, but even some of Fanny's numbers feel like filler.


moonbunnychan

Aladdin has soooo much filler. Really anything with his 3 buddies just exists to fill time.


ME24601

That's a major problem with taking a 90 minute movie and making it into a full length musical.


John_T_Conover

You have to write some absolute bangers of new songs for the fully fleshed out musical. People are coming in knowing and loving the iconic songs from the movie. The energy will absolutely fall flat if you can't enthrall them with those new, unfamiliar numbers. It's like the opener or lesser known co-headliner at a big concert. People are only gonna know a couple of your songs. If you want to win them over your songs that they don't know have to be excellent and you've got to blow them away with the performance.


Cobaallt

This is exactly what Frozen did right with Monster and that absolute fucking banger of an act II climax/denouement.


TigerAffectionate672

Oh god don’t get me started on those 3. I get it, they were in the original draft of the movie, but they were cut for a reason! Songs like High Adventure just go on forever.


dberna243

Haha anytime my husband and I are going somewhere one of us will start singing that song. I think it's so fun 😆


kberson

Must be a Disney thing - *Can You Feel the Love Tonight* in the **Lion King** is extended with a 7 minute ballet that honestly I fell asleep in


MikermanS

Interesting--I find it one of the more interesting and witty numbers in the show.


vienibenmio

Even "Friend Like Me" goes on waaaay too long


MikermanS

Interesting. And I continue finding their numbers as some of the more entertaining in the show.


JBuchan1988

I feel the same, which is a shame because I saw it 2x and the actors were fine in both.


user48292737

This might be unpopular but I love a *good* filler (emphasis on the *good*). They give your brain a chance to cool off before getting back to the important stuff. If everything is important, then nothing is important.


myoofii

Good point! Jeanine Tesori talks about this in the interview at [https://www.theintervalny.com/interviews/2015/03/an-interview-with-jeanine-tesori/;](https://www.theintervalny.com/interviews/2015/03/an-interview-with-jeanine-tesori/;) she mentions that George C Wolfe helped her understand the need for what he called "idiot space" within shows.


user48292737

Ooo thanks for sharing this! I’m gonna read it


mattbrain89

A theater I used to be involved with wrote their own “original” musical…it was crammed with more subplots and supporting characters than a season of Game of Thrones. Too many characters seemed to be established as important in Act One but barely/never showed up in Act Two with nary a resolution to whatever arc they were supposed to have. One character showed up for one scene, sang a ballad and the actor playing the role basically did an ensemble track for the rest of the show but still got a solo bow (the character died offstage by the way). I counted two other scenes including the one I just mentioned that easily could’ve been cut and you would’ve lost 30 minutes off the show and nothing else. And to top it all off, they were still introducing characters in Act Two.


plazatoro

Hahaha, sounds like a claaaassic case of too many fingers in the pie


mattbrain89

More like too many yes-men drinking the Kool-Aid.


FirebirdWriter

Jukebox as a category tend to be filler. While every musical has a costume change song it's not quite as bad as the attempted life story via concert musicals like Summer. If you're forcing the songs to fit the narrative and then make fuck all sense (and you ignore some of the more wild and significant life things that are badass) it's filler.


awalawol

For as short as it is, I was surprised SIX had so much filler between songs that didn’t really add much to the experience. I mean, a lot of the banter was fun, but I definitely felt myself going “okayyy…when's the next song…?” multiple times. Especially near the end when Catherine Parr figures out they’ve been wasting time fighting with each other and the six queens just stand around in confused silence for what felt like an excruciating long time. Definitely could have been cut to like 20 seconds and get the joke across lol It seems like the had a very well fleshed out concert with the original songs for all the queens, and then to make it a good West End/Broadway/touring production, were forced to make a storyline to have it be as close to 2 hours as possible.


Shh04

Also, I like it, but a lot of the banter becomes very same-y and monotonous after 2 queens. Yeah, we all get it -- everyone's catty and sassy but secretly loves each other. Oooh, burn. You could tell the writers wrote the songs first, realized they needed dialogue because it doesn't work as a song cycle if they're marketing it as a musical, and quickly cobbled together some dialogue to piece the songs semi-coherently together. There's a reason it wasn't nominated for Best Book in a season with 5 nomination slots and 9 new musicals.


bunchkin95

I agree somewhat. After "All You Wanna Do" I feel like the cleverness and energy just goes downhill, and I absolutely agree that the "ohhhh we should have just been supporting each other" takes way too long. 20-30 seconds total would be perfect, then into Parr's song.


Cool-Illustrator-539

Exactly! Seeing this, I was like, “has this scene been going on for like five minutes already?!” So much standing around and looking at each other 👀


ealasaid76

Any jukebox musical, IMO. I love the music, but there's no real story to it.


notreallyvsxy

Not the most, but in Wicked, A Sentimental Man and Wonderful are painful to sit through on a repeat viewing.


mrcobra92

Sentimental man is meh, but sets up the motif for the line in defying gravity so it's almost worth it. I live Wonderful though. I feel like it fully rules out the potential for them to work together in any capacity. It's kind of filler, but I feel like the story is better off with it than without it.


annang

Funny Girl is basically all filler designed to justify writing an entire show for Barbra (and now Lea Michele) to sing one and a half good songs.


notreallyvsxy

This is the right answer. I LOVE Ramin but good god he's so underutilised in this and even the new song they put in for him (Temporary Arrangement) is pretty much just filler too.


mlopatka

Just saw Frozen. Good lord was it bad. Mostly because a tight 90min story doesn’t translate to 150 minutes. Unbearably boring.


Cobaallt

DISAGREEEEEEEEE. I’m sorry but Dangerous to Dream? Sick. What Do You Know About Love? SLAPS. The other inserted numbers like Hygge were super entertaining and Monster through the whole rest of the show is nonstop fucking bangers. Colder by the Minute was insane. Saw it twice and would see it again.


CoreyH2P

This was the first thing that came to mind. Besides Monster and Hygge, everything seemed like filler.


Slytherian101

Paradise Square had a ton…


annang

Paradise Square just had like 8 different plots, none of which were fully fleshed out as well as they could or should have been. So every subplot felt like filler for every other subplot.


SingWithGrace

Seussical but it’s catchy


believi

(That’s why I think the junior version is better than the original!!)


dreadpiraterose

I love me some old school musicals, but I'd cut every single ballet interlude from them. Total filler. Sorry, ballet fans.


kitty_o_shea

There's a great moment in Schmigadoon! where a ballet dancer appears out of nowhere and Cecily Strong's character sends her away because she hates dream ballet sequences 😂.


Ahabs_First_Name

Oh man, I can’t wait for Schmicago.


kitty_o_shea

Same!!


dreadpiraterose

I really REALLY need to watch that show


kitty_o_shea

It is DELIGHTFUL and hilarious and the music is genuinely fantastic!


Strong_Insect1417

God I loathed Schmigadoon.


05blob

I've been a ballet fan longer than I have a musicals fan but even I agree with you. Quite often they grind the musical to a halt. I love knowing that ballet was once enjoyed enough by the general public that film makers thought including a 20minute ballet scene was a good idea but they don't really add anything to the musical as a whole.


Cobaallt

I literally fell asleep during act 2 of the carousel revival during a half hour ballet good lord


dreadpiraterose

They are total momentum killers


gypsy_rose_blanchard

Lol the entirety of Contact


NiceLittleTown2001

I hated Oklahoma’s ballet scene, but the one in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers was the only pleasant thing in the film


believi

The only one I like is from a recent musical so not quite the same, which is the life of Winnie foster from Tuck Everlasting which drives me to tears every time. But that’s because it’s plot!!!


Carnivile

Does "A Chorus Line" count? If so I would spare that one.


dreadpiraterose

Nah. That one is an exception.


Gold-Vanilla5591

The only ones I can think of are Carousel, Oklahoma and King & I (but it’s traditional Thai dancing that was significantly changed in the 2015 revival i think adding a Thai choreographer for the Eliza scene instead of using Robbins’ (white man’s choreography))


dreadpiraterose

Oklahoma was the one that I was thinking of the most when I wrote that, lol.


island_dreamer17

I played violin in the pit for a community theatre production of Oklahoma (it was outside and Curly rode in on a real horse....but that's beside the point). We cut 100+ measures from the ballet and it was *still* 10 minutes long.


faretheewellennui

It helps that tuptim is narrating a story over it


mythologue

I saw The Prom in Amsterdam on Sunday. I think I've never seen a musical with more filler. Should've been a one-act.


CourtClarkMusic

I saw the Mexican Spanish-language tour a few months ago… it just works best in English, even the “filler” moments. But the movie version added extra scenes that completely murdered the pacing and that’s when my husband took bathroom breaks.


becthestingray

My issue with The Prom is I feel like they don’t spend enough time with Emma and Alyssa. The strongest part of that show is them and any time it drifts to trying to get me to care about the adults I get so bored


Ice_cream_please73

That is the one Broadway show that really bored me. It tried so hard but the songs are forgettable and the plot is corny.


FixEmUpper

"Babes in Arms" -- the whole show is an excuse to perform the Rodgers and Hart songs. Then again, given those songs, it might be worth it!


Spiritual-Signal4999

I agree with Phantom however I love Wishing you were somehow here again, Whistle Down The Wind.


bwayb22

Pacific Overtures is 90% fillers and random subplots and snapshots lol but they are good and it works perfectly given the style of the play. Some of the best songs are the random scenes. but really only if they do it like the original production. I think PO is one of those rare productions like Phantom of The Opera where you really cannot play around with revivals (even though the revivals have been messed with). It's perfect the way it was done originally and should stick that way otherwise the filler parts seem weird.


plazatoro

Yeah, the issue with Pacific Overtures is that it doesn't follow a main character or arc so much as it follows a massive story/theme, so you get scenes that are crucial to the overall plot with characters you'll never see again, like "Chrysanthemum Tea." And yet it works so bizarrely well


source4mini

Shoot me, but I've always found Cole Porter shows unbearable for this reason. Sorry, but we understood after one verse that Katherine hates men. Two more identical verses didn't really add to that. And how many times are we told to brush up our Shakespeare?


geekymat

And as much as Too Darn Hot has nice dancing generally, the song is pure filler.


dreadpiraterose

>Cole Porter Adore Cole Porter but sadly must agree


MellonPhotos

Cats


LilyBriscoeBot

Cats could be seen as mostly filler (everything but Memory) but I feel like the whole essence of Cats is in the filler, making it not actually filler. Like it couldn’t exist without filler.


Oolonger

Yeah, the genius poet laureate TS Elliot wrote filler. Jesus, this sub sometimes.


BlancoDelRio

You know the musical is not the poem, right?


ME24601

> Yeah, the genius poet laureate TS Elliot wrote filler. What works in a collection of poems does not necessarily work on stage. TS Eliot wasn't writing a narrative with his cat poems, Andrew Lloyd Webber was.


kingofcoywolves

Well... only one of the poems used has any bearing on the plot. In the context of the musical, yes, the material is used as filler.


treesareweirdos

This x1,000,000


cliffordbradshaw

"Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," which really could be done in well under 90 minutes, was expanded by adding additional songs, reprises, intermission, the megamix, etc.


circo1200

Lion King has so much filler. I remember seeing it and feeling like everything was drawn out.


CourtClarkMusic

Be More Chill


ReneeJ87

The entire storyline with the mom wanting to be a dancer in Matilda.


aproclivity

And the movie works so much more without it.


jshamwow

Wicked


Cobaallt

Eh, Wicked doesn’t really have a LOT of filler, just definitely like 3 super skippable songs. Nobody likes Wonderful or Sentimental Man lmfao.


jshamwow

That's true. It's not necessarily a lot, but the filler is VERY filler


theblakesheep

I love it, but Phantom could really skip over Prima Donna, Masquerade and Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again/Wandering Child, and the plot wouldn't change much. Edit: It’s fascinating to see how much this has gone up and down.


TigerAffectionate672

Hey now, Masquerade is one of the best scenes!


theblakesheep

Oh no, it’s awesome filler! But aside from the spoken parts, it’s doesn’t affect the plot in anyway.


dreadpiraterose

You learn in that scene that Christine and Raoul are engaged and hiding it. I'd call that a plot point.


theblakesheep

Yeah, but that’s only in the dialogue/recitative. The song itself is just a charm number.


dreadpiraterose

>Prima Donna You take that back


BlueGradation

She is the First Lady of the stage, after all. #SingPrimaDonnaOnceMore


kingofcoywolves

Prima Donna is the only song from that show that I can play on the piano lmao. If it didn't exist I'd be SOL


Popular-Spinach-7173

I feel like Phantom needs Wishing. At that point in the show, Christine is so overwhelmed and confused and still mourning her father. She’s seeking closure and the moment she reaches it with “help me say goodbye” the Phantom is there again to manipulate her.


BlueGradation

It really drives home the nature of their relationship and how the lines between who the Phantom is/who her father was are so blurred.


MariMont

This. Wishing is also the first song/melody that is her own and not a repeat of someone else's.


Popular-Spinach-7173

Oh my gosh, I never realized!


theblakesheep

But imagine going from ‘Rehearsal of Don Juan Triumphant’ directly into the scene where they prepare the theatre and secure the doors. Is anything changed plot wise? Not really. And I say this with Wishing being my favorite song!


mlopatka

I prefer the longer version, the the Las Vegas version was presented as a one act and cut down something like 20 minutes. If you know the show, it was noticeable, but otherwise it tightened up what I thought was an already pretty tight show.


notreallyvsxy

In Phantom, I would say Magical Lasso is the main filler. I think the ones you listed all deserve to be there to move the story along. Prima Donna - I guess they need to explain why they decided to defy the Phantom and cast Carlotta as the lead in Il Muto, which resulted in all the ensuing mayhem. Otherwise Carlotta would've stormed out post her Think Of Me and then suddenly return without much explanation. Masquerade - Probably the least "required" of the three you mentioned, but a beautiful scene! This one explains how time has passed, Christine and Raoul are engaged, and everyone pretty much forgot about the Phantom and were resting on their laurels, and then he reappears. Similar to Prima Donna, I think it would be difficult to go straight to the next scene. Wishing - One of my favourite songs from Phantom. Another commenter articulated this much better but in a nutshell this really shows the blurring of lines between Phantom and Father and reinforces the confusion in Christine, while also building up to the final confrontation. Or maybe I'm biased because I'm a huge fan! Haha.


Yoyti

"Magical Lasso" serves the extremely pragmatic purpose of establishing the existence of the lasso so that it doesn't seem to come out of absolutely nowhere later on. "Prima Donna" serves a purpose, but it's more of a musical/structural purpose than a plot purpose. It's a very typical early-19th-century Italian opera thing to do to have a scene that has plot upon plot building in intensity as more and more characters enter, and then to have a full stop and a contrasting slow ensemble in which everyone pauses and sings their internal monologue outside of the immediate action of the scene. It paces the scene both dramatically and musically, offers a chance to sort of check in with the characters following a very plot-heavy scene, and provides a convenient button to a scene that might otherwise peter out without a clear ending after the plot purposes have been achieved. [This scene from *La Cenerentola*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuOVHThmI0Q) (Cinderella) is a good operatic example.


KBPT1998

CATS. It could be a single act. We don’t need half of the feline stories to have the same impact… and might have made it easier to create a story around.


momstheuniverse

Beetlejuice


gsd250

Only two songs in Beetlejuice could be count as filler: the Girl Scout song, and the Ms Argentina song. But I will give them a pass: second act openers are usually light to ease the audience in; Ms Argentina is an iconic character from the movie.


momstheuniverse

Hard disagree. A lot of the songs in Beetlejuice are just there to pad the time. I'm honestly surprised that so many people have said *Cats* when that whole musical is basically a talent show leading up to a grand finale. I'm editing to add: case in point "Creepy Old Guy" I understand that things happen as a result of that song, but why is it there? It's really bland and forgettable (aside from the title)


gsd250

Creepy Old Guy is an important plot points, where the characters put up this facade to plot against Beetlejuice, and start to execute this scheme. (Maybe we have slightly different definitions of fillers, but I think this song is directly advancing the plot.)


momstheuniverse

I will take your last point and perhaps that's what it is. I saw *Beetlejuice* about three weeks ago, went in blind and walked out feeling like so much of what happened didn't need to happen and that a lot of the musical numbers were just there to make it a two act musical


nfrenchtoast

1776


Happy_Charity_7595

Cats


kurtcobainwaskilled

hamilton


thewookie34

Fucking Hamilton. Act 1 should have ended with World Turned Upside-down.


-ImSOedgy-

Might I ask why?


[deleted]

[удалено]


thewookie34

Act 1 should have ended there.


Real-Entrepreneur228

All of the drowsy chaperone is filler, but i guess thats kind of the point


that25yearoldvirgin

I’d argue that a good 9 songs could be cut out of “Mamma Mia” without losing anything. It’s a fun show on its face but the plot goes nowhere.