Christy by Request — Newsies

“Newsies” was not exactly a massive hit when it came out in April 1992. It made only about $2.8 million at the box office and currently stands at a meager 39 percent on the Tomatometer.

But something has happened over the years since then — a change of heart through home-video and cable viewings, perhaps — that has allowed “Newsies” to develop somewhat of a cult following, including a revival as a Broadway musical. My good friend Jen Yamato, an LA Times film writer who has exceptional taste, is a longtime, vocal fan. And it’s the movie that came up in the latest Christy by Request drawing, the suggestion of Paul Rich (@paulrich1138), a Twitter follower of mine from Tennessee.

I know I’d seen the Disney musical — the directorial debut of choreographer and “High School Musical” mastermind Kenny Ortega — at some point, but revisited it over the weekend. (Nicolas wouldn’t watch it with me. He insists he hates musicals — but he loves “Phineas and Ferb,” in which the characters burst into song at some point during every single episode. Go figure.)

In retrospect, I can see what Ortega was going for here. With a script by Bob Tzudiker and Noni White and songs from the legendary Alan Menken (“The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin”) and J.A.C. Redford, “Newsies” is an old-fashioned, backlot musical. In that regard, it’s not unlike Prince’s equally unloved “Graffiti Bridge,” which happened to come up as a Christy by Request selection a couple weeks ago. 

Inspired by the 1899 New York City newspaper boy strike against publisher Joseph Pulitzer, “Newsies” features peppy song-and-dance numbers from a giant ensemble cast of adorable kids, led by a lanky, teenage Christian Bale. With their distressed newsboy hats and vests, these are musically gifted ragamuffins executing grand jetes through the ersatz streets of Manhattan. It’s extremely earnest and more than a little corny, but there’s an innocence about it that makes it kinda irresistible. You’d hate yourself for hating it. It would be like kicking a puppy.

Besides Bale — doing a New York accent that’s as thick as cheesecake — “Newsies” features a trash-talking Max Casella, David Moscow (young Josh from “Big”) as the brains of the union operation, Robert Duvall as a cigar-smoking, money-hungry Pulitzer and Bill Pullman as the dogged reporter who dares to tell the kids’ story. The ever-reliable character actor Michael Lerner brings life to his supporting role as the crusty circulation manager, and Ann-Margret is imminently overqualified for her few, brief scenes as a sassy but sweet-hearted music hall star who’s something of a guardian angel to these kids.

Again, enthusiasm trumps substance here. But Ortega struggles to have it both ways in telling this story of lovably scruffy boys fighting against a price drop that would greatly hurt them, but doing it in a lively, entertaining way.

The production numbers are the movie’s real draw and the place where Ortega’s showy instincts shine brightest. The scene in which the kids charge the newspaper distribution center and trash the place, sending sheets of paper flying through the air, has an anarchic energy that’s frequently missing elsewhere in this safe and wholesome production. But why shouldn’t they dance in the streets to express their angst and enthusiasm? Besides, there’s no room to do it in their cramped flophouse, where they lie around shirtless in their bunks in a way that’s more than a little homoerotic.

The dialogue in between, though, often tends to be cringe-inducing in its on-the-nose nature. Bale, in his first big role after Spielberg’s “Empire of the Sun,” is stuck with facile, rousing lines like: “Headlines don’t sell papers. Newsies sell papers.” But his trademark fearlessness and swagger were on display early. He also jumps on a horse mid-song during his plaintive solo, “Santa Fe,” in which he sings of his longing to move out West, which is admittedly impressive.

The other characters are relegated to playing flimsy types. Spot Conlon (Gabriel Damon) is the jaded-beyond-his-years leader of the Brooklyn newsies whose main purpose is to show up every once in a while and shout, “Brooklyn!” Marty Belafsky provides frequent goofy yuks as a good-hearted, nasal-voiced kid who walks with a crutch named — wait for it — Crutchy. And so on. In real life, maybe they all did have wacky nicknames, and maybe they did sit around smoking cigarettes and trading wisecracks with the cynicism of men three times their age. But it all comes off as a little hokey and false.

And while several of the songs are catchy, especially “Seize the Day,” they ultimately reveal themselves as being thematically redundant, and the multiple reprises extend the film’s overlong running time.

But Pulitzer, the man against whom these kids are targeting all their adolescent anger,  has a line that actually resonates today: “The power of the press is the greatest power of them all,” he says to Bale’s Jack Kelly, who refers to him impudently as “Joe.” So perhaps “Newsies” truly is relevant after all.