Perhaps it starts in films like My Best Friend's Wedding and There's Something About Mary where whole casts break into song....

Well...maybe "Build me up, Buttercup" doesn't inspire ingenious films like O Brother, Where Art Thou?, but it does spark something for the audience, it seems, who, in the last decade, have seemed to expect singing characters only in animated films.

A couple years ago, Alan Parker's vision of A.L. Weber's Evita hit the screens, demonstrating that at least some audiences could sit through a completely musical film. While the film didn't smash box office records, the soundtrack was a top seller. Granted that Evita was something of a musically cohesive work, and the music led the narrative....

The Coen Brothers' O Brother is something more of a patchwork, music taken from a common era, but grafted to the narrative of the film, turning a loose and relatively simple adaptation of plot into something more colorful and artistic.

(Not imply a negative connotation of simplicty--not at all.)

And now, Moulin Rouge, expanding on the "musical patchwork" concept, taking music not merely from a common era, but of a common and simple theme, such as Lennon's "All You Need Is Love" -- a simple message, woven into the film narrative of a practically Shakepearean-ly simple plot. (Note: "Shakespereanly" is not a legitimate adverb.) Moulin Rouge employs brilliant, almost-humorously grandiose orchestrations of songs that several generations have incorporated into popular culture.

So where does the success of O Brother and Moulin Rouge leave us for the future? More of the same? As we may expect, the ticket-talliers of Hollywood are too uninspired to let a good thing alone....

O Brother was a pretty original experience, though. Again, it's not the story so much as the music that unites the various oddities and eccentricities...

I think of Little Shop of Horrors as another "cult musical", though I have a personal history with that musical that kind of prohibits my own complete appreciation with the music. Still, lifting the plot from that old Roger Corman film, it put Menken and Ashman on the map, which some folks that have affection for the late 80's/early 90's Disney films can revere...

OBWAT was still really fun, if not perfect.