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Message: [QUOTE="nelsonmuntz, post: 5274197, member: 833"] [B]West Side Story [/B](2021) - I had not seen this yet and need to justify my Disneyplus subscription so I watched it. It is OK, although I didn't like the ending at all. Rachel Zegler is excellent, and Ansel Elgort was good although a little miscast. Not bad enough to be a problem, but he is a little too old for the role. With a couple of exceptions, I don’t love the songs overall and the cast is massive, which makes it hard to follow. Ariana DeBose was good as Anita, although I don't understand the raving from the reviews. I didn't like the Bernardo and Riff characters, who end up driving the plot. They aren't supposed to be likable (for those that don't know, West Side Story is essentially a musical version of Romeo and Juliet set on the Upper West Side in 1957), but both characters come across as really awful, to the point that I am annoyed at the other characters for liking or following these two. My biggest issue is that the plot does not age well. A plot built around "noble deaths" in a gang war worked in the 60's but is a little off now. The scene with Anita in the drugstore at the end is gratuitous and should have been re-written out of the movie. The Sharks and especially the Jets characters end up coming across as more evil, and much less sympathetic and relatable, than I think some previous audiences would have perceived them. [/QUOTE]