Cynical Cinema

So I determined through the Cartier Affair that David Hasselhoff can’t really act. With the Spongebob movie, I learned that he’s not even very good as a self-deprecating cameo. It has been said he is an actor. This is false. It has also been said he is a singer. Mostly by the Germans. If this proves to be false, I will learn that the only thing he’s really good at is getting wasted and eating cheeseburgers, making him Randy from Traier Park Boys.So, in order to find out if the Hoff can sing, I purchased a copy of Jekyll and Hyde: the Musical. This is a Broadway musical that has been filmed live and inexplicably made into a DVD. It can be found in the $2.99 bin at Wal-Mart. I didn’t think it was like Wal-Mart to overprice things that much. Hasselhoff plays both Dr. Jekyll AND Mr. Hyde, so you get twice the Hoff! Which means he sings twice as much, and proves that he may be the most inexplicable star in the world.

It turns out he can’t sing well, OR act. So ladies, please. Send me an email. Is he unusually attractive? I don’t get it. And I certainly didn’t get this musical. It wasn’t just the Hoff – the writers rhymed the word “man” with the word “man”, “murder” with “murder”…perhaps the best line in the musical is “we think you’re odd – don’t try to play God”. But truly this isn’t a movie, it’s a live Broadway production. So the live audience is disconcerting. You’ll hear them laugh after some line from the Hoff, or cheer after some terrible song, and you think “damn studio audiences – that’s not funny!”.

Hasselhoff does, however, attempt to prove his acting chops in this one, as he effects a seemless transformation between the earnest Dr. Jekyll and the hideous Mr. Hyde by messing up his hair and sticking out his bottom lip. This proves fairly ineffective, as he has to pull that bottom lip back in to sing.

Jekyll and Hyde is a musical even Woody couldn’t love.