Bob Avian & Baayork Lee in the movie Every Little Step. Movie Review & Trailer

"A Chorus Line" celebrates the itch to perform and the exquisite, control-freaky showmanship that is the Broadway musical at its greatest.

You can't judge "A Chorus Line" by its film version; it's one of the lousiest movie musicals ever.

But you can assess the stage original's influence by the wonderful new documentary "Every Little Step," which intercuts the story of how the original 1975 show came together with a step-by-step, fly-on-the-wall account of how the custodians of the recent 2006 Broadway revival came to cast whom they cast and why.

It's a big ice cream sundae, this one -- not great documentary filmmaking but tasty all the way.

It works particularly (though not exclusively) if the show itself meant something to you at a young age. I first saw "A Chorus Line" two years into the original Broadway run, when I was 16, and I was never quite the same afterward.

The show will never exert that sort of pull again. In our endlessly exhibitionist culture, where everyone's a star every second of their self-promoted lives, a Me Decade artifact -- however glorious -- doesn't hit an audience with the same daring, the same drive.

Still: What a show.

Most successful Broadway musical entertainments are manufactured; this one was the product of informal psychotherapy. One night in January 1974, armed with 12 hours of reel-to-reel tape waiting for some stories, director/choreographer Michael Bennett -- a Svengali, an egomaniac, a manipulative shark, a hoofer, a genius -- got together with 22 chorus gypsies and talked about their lives.

The show grew out of those stories, and though it took a while (the various, gormless workshop editions prior to opening puzzled many of its own collaborators), the results, well, they worked.

Bennett is gone, as are others crucial to the making of the original "Chorus Line," but "Every Little Step" finds longtime Bennett colleague Bob Avian in fine form, genial and sentimentally encouraging to most of the talent throughout the audition process (3,000 union and non-union dancers tried out for it).

Baayork Lee, the original, 4-foot-10-inch Connie, has long been a custodian of this piece, and watching her somewhat fearsome mastery of each moment in the rehearsal room, you can smell the dedication on her as far away as Yonkers.

There are Cinderella stories afoot in co-directors James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo's "Every Little Step," and no little heartache. We get to know lots of starry-eyed hopefuls, many of whom will not make the cut.

The movie certainly makes the cut; it's a showbiz wallow.

It's good to remember, by way of a guileless making-of account of a hit show's successful revival, just how much "A Chorus Line" expanded the parameters of the Broadway musical, in such overwhelming emotional style.

Every Little Step MPAA rating: PG-13 (for some strong language including sexual references).

Running time: 1:36.

Featuring: Bob Avian, Baayork Lee, Marvin Hamlisch, Yuka Takara, Deidre Goodwin, Jessica Lee Goldyn, Charlotte D'Amboise.

Directed and produced by James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo;

Edited by Fernando Vellena and Brad Fuller.

A Sony Pictures Classics release.

 

Every Little Step Movie Review - Bob Avian & Baayork Lee

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