EW’s greatest movie musicals

Entertainment Weekly has generated a list of the 25 Greatest Movie Musicals of All Time, and in more than half of them, the story’s setting is a major character.

The musicals with sense of place are:

25. Once — The streets of Dublin and soul of Ireland are the backdrop for the wistful musical love story.

23. The Music Man — Little Ronnie Howard lisps his way through the eponymous scene setter song, Gary, Indiana for this quintessential musical Americana.

22. Gigi — Paris is integral to the abundant charm of Gigi. And Maurice Chevalier, of course.

19. The Sound of Music — It may now actually be impossible to visit the Alps without, at some point, spinning like Julie Andrews and warbling “the hills are alive…”

17. Chicago — An old school Chicago gangsta story.

15. Hairspray — John Waters’ Baltimore is a kooky, misfit city with soul.

13. On the Town — Through all the years and all the changes, three sailors singing New York, New York (a helluva town) still capture the city’s pulse.

11. An American in Paris — Skip everything but the impressionistic ballet to Gershwin’s symphony.

9. Meet me in St. Louis — The proud bluster of the turn-of-the-century Midwest is backdrop to a story about small town values and big-city progress.

5. Mary Poppins — Burt the chimney sweep and his mates dance across the brooding rooftops of Victorian London in Chim-Chim-Cher-ee.

4. Cabaret — Here, postwar Berlin as a hallucination of sex, indulgence, bigotry and fear.

2. West Side Story — New York City’s Spanish ghetto is a strong player in this Shakespearean tale of immigrant gangs circa 1950s.

1. The Wizard of Oz — You mean Oz isn’t a real place? It is for everyone who grew up on the movie.

To see the rest of the list, visit Entertainment Weekly.

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