Burlesque

Review: 'Burlesque' Is Trashy Fun, Until It's Not

In "Burlesque," the gaudy new movie musical, Christina Aguilera plays a buxom nobody from Iowa who comes to the big city in search of fame and money, although she's such a cipher that this might be the audience projecting motivation on a character that simply seems to glide through whole sequences, sometimes quite literally. After a painfully inept "looking for a job" montage that gives the term "workmanlike" a bad name, she comes across a squat building on Sunset Boulevard that promises "The Best View on the Sunset Strip - Without Any Windows." Inside, Alan Cumming, grabbing every second of screen time he has and devouring it carnivorously, ...