The best movie musicals of 2021, ranked (including Peter Dinklage's 'Cyrano')

We may be in a new golden age of movie musicals.

In the nearly two decades since "Chicago" became an Oscar best picture-winning hit, Hollywood has typically doled out two or three song-filled features a year, ranging from delightful ("Mamma Mia!") to drab ("Jersey Boys") to downright abysmal ("Les Misérables"). But partly because of pandemic-delayed releases, we've been gifted 10 new entries to the genre this year alone, including Steven Spielberg's reworked "West Side Story" and "Cyrano," starring Peter Dinklage of "Game of Thrones," both in theaters now.

Here's how they stack up with the best (and worst) of this year's movie musicals:

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10. 'Cinderella'

Now streaming on Amazon Prime

A film so manufactured that it may as well have come straight off an Amazon assembly line, this bargain bin "Cinderella" works hard to update the classic fairy tale, but loses all its magic in the process. Ella (Camila Cabello) is now a spunky, career-minded businesswoman who would rather make dresses in her spacious basement apartment than try to woo a prince (Nicholas Galitzine). As admirable as that is, writer/director Kay Cannon totally defangs Ella's wicked stepmother (Idina Menzel) and stepsisters (Maddie Baillio and Charlotte Spencer), who, unlike the trailer suggests, push her to marry for money so she can have a better life. (They even do their own laundry while belting Madonna, no less!) With no stakes to speak of, the movie's only saving grace is the charismatic Billy Porter, who flies in to sing Earth, Wind & Fire as Ella's brassy and benevolent Fabulous Godmother.

9. 'Come From Away'

Now streaming on Apple TV+

Following the success of last year's "Hamilton" on Disney+, the producers of "Come From Away" filmed a live performance of the Broadway hit for an audience of 9/11 survivors and front-line workers this spring. The Tony Award-winning musical tells the incredible true story of a small Canadian town that welcomed 7,000 stranded travelers in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. With a small cast of a dozen actors flitting around and playing multiple characters, it can be hard to connect to any one storyline, and the twee score of vaguely Celtic ballads is only occasionally rousing. But you can't fault a show that's so intent on preaching empathy and kindness, and "Come From Away" certainly has its heart in the right place, if not much else.

8. 'Dear Evan Hansen'

Available to buy or rent

No thanks to his hair and makeup team, Ben Platt is bizarrely styled to look like a tax auditor who wandered into a high-school English class. The musical’s cringey morals are also only magnified in tight close-ups, with songs like "For Forever" and "Words Fail" that come across as way more sociopathic than sweet. And yet, there are still aspects to admire of director Stephen Chbosky’s slick adaptation, which comes alive whenever its sensational cast of supporting women are onscreen. Amy Adams, Kaitlyn Dever and Amandla Stenberg all sing and suffer gorgeously. But it's MVP Julianne Moore, as Evan’s patient and overworked mom, who delivers the film's most tear-jerking moment in the aching "So Big/So Small."

7. 'Everybody's Talking About Jamie'

Now streaming on Amazon Prime

From a filmmaking standpoint, there's nothing remarkable about "Jamie," which is adapted from a West End musical and based on a 2011 TV documentary about a British teen-turned-drag queen (played by Max Harwood). The quick-cut editing is whiplash-inducing, and the neon-drenched musical numbers gave us PTSD after last year's similarly flashy "The Prom." But an insanely catchy score goes a long way, and we haven't stopped humming the peppy title track or "Don't Even Know It." And even in its most cloying scenes, there's something very moving about the movie's warm embrace of queer joy. Jamie is perennially supported by his mom (Sarah Lancashire), best friend (Lauren Patel) and drag mentor (Richard E. Grant), who reminds him that he stands on the shoulders of his gay elders, a generation of whom were lost to HIV/AIDS.

6. 'Diana: The Musical'

Now streaming on Netflix

This "Diana" is, by all accounts, awful. The new Broadway musical, which was taped for Netflix during the pandemic, is a throwback to the kitschy British pop-rock musicals that invaded New York in the 1980s, but with none of the Andrew Lloyd Webber earworms that elevated those shows. "Diana" reduces Princess Di (Jeanna de Waal) and Camilla Parker Bowles (Erin Davie) to catty rivals clawing over Prince Charles (Roe Hartrampf), while scenes of her charity work border on mockery. ("I may be unwell but I'm handsome as hell," a young man dying of AIDS sings at one point.)

And yet, for all its clunky lyrics and shameless exploitation of the princess' legacy, "Diana" is the rare disaster to earn its "so bad it's good" title. Whether she's wailing on an electric cello during a stiff-lipped orchestra concert with Charles, or dropping f-bombs while belting an empowerment anthem about her famous revenge dress, it's all so unbelievably wretched that you can't help but laugh. Pro tip: You may want to have some wine on hand.

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5. 'Cyrano'

In select theaters

Ever since his eye-popping take on "Anna Karenina" in 2012, we’ve been longing to see what director Joe Wright could do with a full-blown movie musical. Nearly a decade later, the "Atonement" filmmaker hardly disappoints with "Cyrano," adapted from the 2019 Off-Broadway show starring Peter Dinklage ("Game of Thrones"). Dinklage returns for this resplendent film version as the eloquent Cyrano de Bergerac, who because of his appearance, fears telling his best friend (Haley Bennett) that he loves her. When a young soldier (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) catches her eye, Cyrano helps him write passionate letters to woo the luminous noblewoman.

All three leads are magnetic and capable singers, bringing new layers of humanity to a well-told story. But the film’s fatal flaw is, unfortunately, its music by indie-rock band The National, whose brooding tunes largely fail to capture the heightened emotions this swooning romance requires.

4. 'In the Heights'

Available to buy or rent

Few modern directors know their way around a movie musical better than Jon M. Chu, who's been tapped to helm the "Wicked" adaptation starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in light of his phenomenal work on "In the Heights." Set in New York's Washington Heights neighborhood, the film playfully pays homage to musicals of old with a Busby Berkeley-style hip-hop number in a public swimming pool, and characters channeling Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in a gravity-defying dance on the side of a building. Other inventive touches – a record scratch on a manhole cover, salon mannequins serving as a de facto Greek chorus – show Chu proudly leaning into the genre's fantastical possibilities without ever losing sight of the story's emotional center.

Anthony Ramos delivers a star-making turn as Usnavi, a bodega owner wrestling with leaving his tight-knit Latino community, and the musical's Tony-winning creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, makes a scene-stealing cameo as a piragua vendor. And we can't forget Corey Hawkins, playing Usnavi's effortlessly suave best friend Benny, who should seriously be cast in every movie musical from here on out.

3. 'Annette'

Now streaming on Amazon Prime

Nothing we say here could prepare you for the inspired lunacy of "Annette," which takes itself both completely seriously and not at all. Directed by French auteur Leos Carax ("Holy Motors"), from a concept by offbeat pop/rock duo Sparks (who also wrote the film's strangely entrancing songs), the movie follows a sadistic shock comedian (Adam Driver) and his angelic opera-singer wife (Marion Cotillard), whose doomed matrimony is upended by the birth of their daughter, Annette (played by an uncanny yet wholly adorable puppet, a fact never acknowledged by any of the characters).

By now, you've probably seen the many Twitter memes of Baby Annette, who (spoiler alert!) becomes a global singing sensation, and Carax continually ramps up the absurdity as he archly satirizes celebrity culture and toxic masculinity. Driver and Cotillard fully commit to their characters, but it's Baby Annette and "The Big Bang Theory" alum Simon Helberg who run away with the movie, the latter playing an aspiring conductor who ironically narrates some of the film's most gleefully ridiculous moments.

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2. 'tick, tick ... BOOM!'

Now streaming on Netflix

In "tick, tick ... BOOM!," Lin-Manuel Miranda has made the ultimate movie for musical theater fans. No film in recent memory has better captured the anxiety and crushing disappointment of creating art, and the thrill of seeing your work come to life that makes all the heartache (almost) worth it.

Coming off "Hamilton," Miranda makes his feature directorial debut with "BOOM!," which is adapted from Jonathan Larson's semi-autobiographical show. Garfield plays the late "Rent" creator with frenetic energy and boundless charisma, as Jonathan wrestles with the nagging feeling that he's running out of time to achieve his dreams. (Larson died from an aortic aneurysm in 1996 at age 35, the morning "Rent" had its first off-Broadway performance.)

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Miranda surrounds the Oscar-worthy Garfield with a talented crop of stage veterans akin to Broadway's Avengers. Robin de Jesús is a standout as Jonathan's best friend Michael, who offers poignant perspective on the HIV/AIDS crisis as a queer man of color. "BOOM!" also pays loving tribute to Stephen Sondheim (an inspired Bradley Whitford) and his musical "Sunday in the Park with George" with the most gloriously theater-geeky number ever put to film.

1. 'West Side Story'

Now in theaters

The word "masterpiece" gets thrown around far too loosely, but Steven Spielberg’s rapturous "West Side Story" is as close to perfection as you can expect from a movie musical. With the help of screenwriter Tony Kushner ("Angels in America"), the famed filmmaker takes a wrecking ball to the familiar story of doomed lovers Maria (Rachel Zegler) and Tony (Ansel Elgort), and the rival New York gangs trying to keep them apart.

In this adaptation, the white Jets and Latino Sharks are fighting for the last swathes of territory they can still call home, before an encroaching urban renewal project demolishes their neighborhood. For these rudderless young men, winding up dead or locked up is an almost preferable alternative to their current reality, and no one captures that anger and desperation better than Mike Faist as scrappy Jets leader Riff.

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"West Side" also speaks to a broader immigrant experience, as the story’s Spanish-speaking characters struggle to plant roots in a city that doesn’t understand or welcome them. Ariana DeBose delivers the film’s most shattering performance as Anita, a Puerto Rican seamstress who goes from reveling in the possibilities of "America" to having her spirit crushed. Rita Moreno is similarly heartbreaking as sage shop owner Valentina, a new role created for the 90-year-old Oscar winner, who blazingly portrayed Anita in the original 1961 film. Moreno and DeBose are equally deserving of awards recognition, as is Zegler, whose enchanting performance announces the arrival of a major movie star.

The stunning ensemble is a large part of what makes this "West Side" so memorable, along with sweeping cinematography, sumptuous costumes and thrilling choreography, while Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein’s swoon-worthy score has frankly never sounded better or more robust.

These elements all come together seamlessly in Spielberg’s hands, ushering "West Side Story" into a new age with classic moviemaking and modern sensibilities that both reinvent and honor its forebear.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Cyrano': Ranking the best (and worst) movie musicals of 2021