One day more tonight

I watched West Side Story the other day, as part of my project of watching classical Hollywood musicals, and I gotta say, except for the opening scenes which were hilarious without intending to, I was positively surprised.

The songs are light and catchy (I've been singing "Tonight" all day - quite a task when you don't know the lyrics), and there's surprisingly few heartbreaking scenes. The ending, however, nearly killed me, but what to expect when the story is a remake of Romeo & Juliet. It was actually quite fun to look for the parallels to Romeo & Juliet in the plot.

And speaking of parallels...when I heard the song "Tonight Quintet", I couldn't help exclaiming "Hey, that song is just like One Day More in Les Miserables."

 

  

There are some definite likenesses right? Not just the fact that all the main characters sings with voices overlapping, but also the dramatic quality, and then the placement in the movie as a sort of Point of no return, before all the inevitable bad things happen.

What do you think?