Bugsy Malone

It's difficult to imagine who writer/director Parker and producer David Puttman thought the audience would be for this comedy musical which takes a standard Depression-era gangster movie template and turns it into a musical performed entirely by children. It doesn’t work as a comedy or a musical songs (for some reason the kids mime to adult voices) and its simply not well made enough to work as a parody, with the exception of Jodie Foster, whose turn in the iconic Taxi Driver that same year would make her a star, the child actors being not very good.  

Too advanced for kids, too lame for adults with ordinary choreography and pleasant but unmemorably presented by Paul Williams, despite its notionally clever offbeat conceit it doesn't even qualify for cult status.

 

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