Jennifer Lopez dominates ‘Hustlers’

Flashy surfaces and energized performances keep this look at pole dancers on track — but it’s a narrow track.

Jennifer Lopez headlines Hustlers, an inside look at the world of pole dancers — in this case, pole dancers who scam Wall Street hotshots who wantonly spend money on booze, ego-indulgence and lap dances.

Director Lorene Scafaria (The Meddler) includes enough pole dancing and body exposure to keep the movie solidly in R-rated territory as she tells a story that revolves around the developing friendship between Lopez’s Romona and a fledgling dancer who goes by the name Destiny (Constance Wu).

Early on, Romona takes an eager-to-learn Destiny underwing, teaches her the rules of the pole, and offers to partner with her. When two women offer lap dances to drunken finance guys in the private rooms of clubs, the work proves more lucrative (and probably safer) than solo efforts.

Much of the movie consists of energetic sequences that gleefully chronicle the economic ascent of the two women. We also learn a little about each woman. Romona has a daughter. Destiny supports an aging grandmother who doesn’t offer much resistance when presented with thick wads of cash.

Mimicking the rush of a downed shot of vodka and buoyed by the abandon of the big-ticket shopping sprees in which the women indulge, Hustlers wastes no time getting down to business, drama on speed-dial. Written by Scafaria and inspired by a magazine article by Jessica Pressler, the screenplay races across a familiar dramatic arc.

In this case, the intoxications of the movie's early scenes receive sober comeuppance in 2008 when the market collapses. As stocks sink, so do the fortunes of the night clubs and strippers who have become part of the lower Manhattan scene.

After a few unsuccessful attempts to land day jobs, Romana and Destiny strike out on their own, pursuing an activity they call “fishing.”

They lure prosperous businessmen into nights of clubbing, drug their drinks with a combination of Ketamine and MDMA, and pretend to keep pace. The women then proceed to relieve the mark of his credit cards. Said cards get pushed to their limit. Romona and Destiny earn big bucks while ensuring that the clubs and any assistants receive their cuts.

It all seems too good to be true, crime with a safety net. These supposedly savvy sharks aren’t likely to admit they’ve been fleeced out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in their pursuit of a good time.

Lili Reinhart and Keke Palmer play strippers who join Romona and Destiny in their felonious enterprise. Neither character is especially well-developed but the movie gives them each comic moments. Reinhart's Annabelle, for example, tends to throw up under stress; i.e., at the worst possible moments.

I’m not sure that it adds much, but the movie employs a framing device. Destiny narrates the story as she’s being interviewed by a journalist (Julia Stiles) who plans to write a magazine article about how the women raked in money, did a fair amount of high living and ultimately got caught. The bond between them eventually eroded.

It’s worth noting that Hustlers adopts the women’s point of view in depicting men, nearly all of whom seem to be class-A jerks who deserve what they get. Many are married men who lord it over the lap dancers, often throwing money at them in a demeaning fashion. Hustlers is a movie about women -- not about the men who think they're entitled to exploit them.

I wasn’t looking at my watch, but my impression was that Wu receives more screen time than Lopez. If so, there's still no question that Lopez is the movie’s star. Her Romona exudes confidence and entrepreneurial savvy. When she teaches Destiny how to pole dance, you can tell that, no matter what anyone thinks, Romona controls her body. Smart enough to use her physicality to dominate any situation, Romona remains unscathed by her line of work. She's a force.

The women are motivated by a simple equation: Economic self-sufficiency equals freedom. So what if what they do is illegal? The whole country’s nothing more than a rigged game anyway. Why shouldn't they get their share?

Although deeply embedded in the fabric of the movie, this simplistically cynical ethos never seems entirely convincing. To paraphrase Romona: Some people have the money; others dance for it. Pole dancing as a metaphor for the way society works? I didn't buy it.

Full of flash and performance verve, Hustlers nonetheless remains a showcase for Lopez -- with entertaining cameo help from rappers Cardi B and Lizzo. I don't what it has to do with anything, but it seems worth noting: Cardi B's Bronx accent is thick enough to strip the pretension off just about anything.

'The Goldfinch': a lengthy letdown

The big-screen adaptation of Donna Tartt's popular novel only intermittently clicks.

Many years ago, Bob Rafelson, the writer-director of movies such as Five Easy Pieces, The King of Marvin Gardens and Blood and Wine, told me something I've never forgotten. In an interview, Rafelson said that the best approach for screenwriters who adapt novels is to concentrate on what he or she most loves about the book and jettison everything else.

As is often the case with sage advice, Rafelson's mostly goes unheeded. If you're looking for evidence, search no further than The Goldfinch, the big-screen adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize-winning 2013 novel by Donna Tartt.

Beautifully shot by cinematographer Roger Deakins and mounted with a clear respect for nearly all other aspects of cinema craft, The Goldfinch nonetheless connects only intermittently. It's possible that director John Crowley and screenwriter Peter Straughan had too much respect for the material. Their movie plays like a dutifully illustrated version of Tartt's novel, a two-hour and 29-minute work that has the look of a prestige offering with built-in Oscar glow that the story never really matches.

The movie's pivotal event occurs when young Theodore Decker (Oakes Fegley) visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his mother. As luck would have it, Theodore and his mom happen to be at the museum when it's struck by terrorist bombs. Mom dies, Theodore's odyssey begins, and the source of the story's title is revealed.

Theodore leaves the museum with a small 17th-century painting by Dutch artist Carel Fabritius, a student of Rembrandt. The painting depicts a pet goldfinch that has been chained to its perch. Ironically -- with a capital "I" -- Fabritius perished in an explosion.

The painting becomes the movie's McGuffin, a literary conceit that pushes Theodore into a world that's not always kind to him and which some reviewers of the novel aptly called Dickensian.

The movie contains a ton of plot and many characters. These include the Babours (Nicole Kidman and Boyd Gaines), the Park Avenue couple who take the newly motherless Theodore underwing until the boy's wayward father (Luke Wilson) and his trashy girlfriend (Sarah Paulson) turn up. They drag the boy off to Las Vegas.

In Las Vegas, Theodore meets Boris (Finn Wolfhard), an abused wild child who becomes his only friend and who also introduces him to alcohol and drugs.

Flashbacks to the fateful explosion gradually reveal precisely what happened on the day of the attack, but these hazy backward glances begin to feel tiresome. Crowley also alternates scenes of Theodore as a child with scenes in which Theodore has become a young man played by Ansel Elgort. Boris also crops up as an adult, portrayed by Aneurin Barnard.

Two potential love interests for Theodore also are included: Pippa (Ashleigh Cummings) was in the museum on the day the bombs went off and seems his obvious soulmate. In his early adulthood, Theodore becomes engaged to the Barbours' daughter (Willa Fitzgerald).

Jeffrey Wright gives the movie's most memorable performance as Hobie, an antique dealer who becomes Theodore's mentor. Hobie delivers the speech that announces the movie's theme, a reverence for the immortality of art as contrasted with the fragile mortality of those who create, save and respect it -- and, of course, the rejection of anything that might be considered fake.

Not all the performances come into sharp focus: Kidman portrays a decorous, emotionally reserved woman who also seems to have a genuine affection for Theodore. Wolfhard's Boris enters the movie with the force of a tossed grenade; it's as if he has been added to enliven the proceedings. Fegley's young Theodore can be impish, wounded or rebellious.

And Elgort's tormented and guilt-ridden character (he blames himself for his mother's death) isn't as interesting as his childhood version.

So what to make of all this? Good question and one that the movie's arduous length allows ample time to consider, even when the pace picks up in a third act that's overburdened with thriller-like plot developtments revolving around the painting.

Watchable without being compelling, The Goldfinch leaves us to ponder what this movie, at its deepest level, is all about. If you can't answer that question, you may be forced to consider a sobering possibility: Perhaps that deepest level wasn't reached.

A whistleblower tries to stop the Iraq war

The filmmaking isn't flashy, but Official Secrets tells a compelling story.

In 2003, Katherine Gun did her best to stop Britain from entering the Iraq war. As a British intelligence employee with a specialty in translation, Gun violated the country's Secrets Act so that she could reveal a controversial email. The email instructed those working at Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) to look for information that could be used to pressure U.N. Security Council members to vote for a resolution authorizing the war.

Although Gun's leaked email was published by The Observer, it obviously didn't stop British participation in a war that was being carefully engineered and for which the "intelligence'' books were being cooked.

Directed by Gavin Hood (Eye in the Sky) and starring Keira Knightley, Official Secrets tells Gun's story in straightforward fashion, taking us inside a whistleblower's anxiety-riddled world. Things don't go smoothly for Gun, who eventually was put on trial for violating the Official Secrets Act of 1989.

Knightley and Hood don't add much by way of over-dramatized flourish to the portrayal of Gun, a woman who lived with her Muslim husband (Adam Bakri) in London. After making her momentous decision, Gun tormented herself. Would she get caught? Had she done the right thing?

Written by Sara and Gregory Bernstein, Official Secrets boasts a strong supporting cast. Matt Smith appears as Observer reporter Martin Bright, the journalist who fights to publish the explosive email. Matthew Goode portrays one of Bright's colleagues and Rhys Ifans signs on as the Observer's wild-eyed U.S. correspondent, a reporter who works hard to confirm the authenticity of the email Gun leaked.

Conleth Hill portrays the editor who struggles about publishing a story that could derail a war effort his paper previously supported. Late in the movie, an understated (what else?) Ralph Fiennes shows up as Ben Emmerson, the barrister who defends Katharine.

Official Secrets doesn't always make for rousing cinema but it serves as an important reminder of what can happen to those who realize that secret government objectives sometimes should be subordinated to higher values, one of them being the truth.

Bob's Cinema Diary: 9/13/'19 -- Two views of youth in Mexico

Tigers Are Not Afraid

Director Issa Lopez takes a semi-surreal plunge into the world of Mexico city street kids in Tigers Are Not Afraid. Juxtaposing hard-core realism with revealing fantasies, Lopez gives her film its own special flavor. Lopez sets her story against a drug-riddled backdrop. Early on we're told that 160,000 people have been murdered in Mexico's drug wars and 53,000 are missing. The dangers of rampant lawlessness rule the life of 10-year-old Estrella (Paola Lara), who lives in a world of gunshots and fatalities and must try to survive after her mother goes missing. Much of Lopez's story takes place among kids in similar straits as Estrella. El Shine (Juan Ramon Lopez) commands a gang of boys who are striving to kill Caco, one of the villains who helped turn their neighborhood into a war zone. El Chino (Tenoch Huerta), an even bigger thug than Caco, sets out to eliminate these pesky kids. Lopez offers imagery -- the dead congregated in a sewer, for example -- that reflect and magnify the frightful world in which these kids are forced to live. Ambitious to the point of folly, Tigers Are Not Afraid nonetheless stands as a powerful scream of a movie, a harrowing look at the dangers, bonding, and horror that kids face when thrust into environments so violent that no one is safe.

This Is Not Berlin

Director Hari Sama immerses his movie in the life of Carlos (Xabiani Ponce de Leon), a 17-year-old who, in 1986, discovers a world of drugs, sex and artistic ambition in Mexico City. The characters in This is Not Berlin eagerly explore a world that sometimes proves too unstable for them to manage, particularly when it comes to sex, drugs and artistic expression. Skilled in electronics, Carlos wangles his way into an artistic subculture that's inhabited by the sister (Ximena Romo) of his best friend (Jose Antonio Toledano). Carlos also discovers the excitement that awaits him at The Aztec, a club where gays, straights and those who wish to experiment find one another. Major partying takes place against the backdrop of AIDS proliferation and failed government policies. Adults do turn up: Carlos's mother (Marina de Tavira) can't seem to get out of bed. She's too depressed. Carlos makes his main connection with the adult world through an uncle (played by Sama), an aging hippie who feels a sense of responsibility for his nephew. A young gay man (Mauro Sanchez Navarro) becomes Carlos's guide in this new world. Throbbing dance scenes can be wearing and the basic story -- libidinous liberation leads to near tragedy -- hardly feels groundbreaking. The movie's instructive title tells us that we're looking at an attempt by young people to invent their own culture in ways that are uniquely Mexican. That's an interesting enough reason to make a movie, but This Is Not Berlin didn't quite convince me that it had captured a pivotal moment. The movie may be more meaningful for Mexican audiences who are familiar with the scene that Sama depicts or for those who came of age in the 1980s elsewhere. Me? I was at work.

‘Aquarela’ rides waves of visual power

The movie's title might suggest an animated feature about some winsome Disney sea nymph, but Aquarela is anything but. Russian director Victor Kossakovsky has made a mesmerizing documentary about the power of water and his movie brims with "wow" moments. To create an atmosphere conducive to awe, Kossakovsky eliminates narration and explanation. He decontextualizes his imagery in ways that make us feel as if we're seeing anew. Kossakovsky doesn’t even tell us where on the globe we are, although we can guess. (Russia, Miami, and Venezuela, for example). Aquarela asks an audience to believe that potent images create their own message. Still, it's probably safe to say that Kossakovsky wants us to consider the devastating impact humans have had on the natural environment. In an opening sequence, men work on a thin sheet of ice located off a grim-looking coastline. As the movie unfolds, we’ll see (and hear) giant chunks of ice breaking from glaciers, rising and falling like monsters that have emerged from depths we know nothing about. Watching a couple navigating rough waters in a sailboat proves as harrowing and gripping as any action sequence you've seen. Kossakovsky marries natural sound with occasional infusions of discordant music that augments the sense that he's in tune with forces beyond our control. When Aquarela moves from frozen waters to a tropical setting, the movie makes a tonal shift that's initially jarring, but Kossakovsky recovers and we begin to understand that he’s water shows its power regardless of setting. Aquarela ends somewhat abruptly, but the movie contains some of the year’s most arresting sights; it stands as a towering tribute to Kossakovsky's eye, to the bravery of the camera operators who shot it and, most importantly, to the power of water and to the ocean home from which life emerged and which now may be roiling at our disrespect for its authority.

More 'It' proves less than rewarding

The second chapter of Stephen King's massive novel has high points, but, overall, qualifies as a miss.

It Chapter Two, the eagerly awaited second half of the big-screen adaptation of Stephen King’s 1,000-page novel, feels more like a hundred chapters than the single, concluding act of a drama based on teen bonding and supernatural terror.

Not surprisingly, given the movie's nearly three-hour length and King’s pedigree, Chapter Two has high points (the psychology that brings adults in touch with their worst childhood memories) and low points (a bloated finale that’s so effects-oriented, it puts one in mind of second-rate sci-fi.

Normally, I don’t care about a movie’s length, but in the case of Chapter Two, length fatigue sets in, overwhelming the movie’s virtues. Moreover, last-minute attempts to add sentiment and uplifting instruction doesn’t connect emotionally.

The first movie, popular but very much over-rated, created enough of a fan base to ensure that this second helping will succeed at the box office. Moreover, a cast that includes Bill Hader, James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Isaiah Mustafa, and James Ransone) adds to the movie’s appeal, suggesting that this is no cynically motivated knockoff.

The story takes place 27 years after the first installment. As it turns out, Pennywise -- the lethal clown played by Bill Skarsgard -- returns in 27-year intervals, which means he's again ready to terrorize the idyllic town of Derry, Me.

Director Andy Muschietti, who also directed the first installment, skillfully uses the original’s young cast in flashbacks that help enrich the darkly hued adventures experienced by the now-adult characters of the first installment. Most of these adults don't want to travel to their hometown and only one of them (Mustafa's Mike) remembers exactly what happened 27 years ago.

Not a bad set-up, but Muschietti and screenwriter Gary Dauberman can't solve structural problems inherent in a story that doesn't flow smoothly through its various episodes. Instead, Muschietti lays out chapter after chapter, as each of the returnees confronts an individual horror before the group can unite for a meaningful stand against Pennywise.

I suppose one major question emerges: Is the movie scary?

The answer depends on what you consider frightening. For me, the scares arrive in the form of fun-house attractions augmented by lots of high-end CGI. Muschietti takes full advantage of Pennywise’s shape-shifting abilities, sometimes to comic effect, as the clown transforms into a variety of bizarre creatures and desiccated demons with skin problems.

There are jump scares, to be sure, but it almost feels as if Chapter Two has been designed around the “horror” sequences rather than allowing the horror to emerge naturally (or supernaturally, if you will) from the story.

No faulting the performances, I suppose. Some care has been taken to ensure that the young actors evoke their adult counterparts (except possibly for McAvoy). Among the adults, Hader makes the strongest impression as a stand-up comic in the midst of a mid-level career.

I could go on and talk about the insight (yes, there is some) exhibited in Chapter Two, particularly in the way it understands the humiliations, fears, abuses, missed opportunities and embarrassments of childhood. I also could mention a gratuitous and very cruel prologue in which town bullies attack two gay men at a carnival.

I suppose you'll also want to know that Stephen King and director Peter Bogdanovich make cameo appearances.

But I’m going to put Chapter Two to rest by saying that the movie might have been more entertaining at two hours. Put another way, I’ll ask this question: Does anyone really want to take a three-hour theme-park ride? If you do, you’ll probably be happy with Chapter Two.

Otherwise, you may find a movie that wears you out before it has the sense to conclude.

Brittany runs, but there’s a bit more to it

Some weeks before I saw it, I recall reading that Brittany Runs a Marathon might be the sleeper hit of summer. Well, we’re on the cusp of fall and the movie is just now making its way around the country and I have no idea whether it will be a breakthrough hit.

Still, Brittany has plenty to recommend it. Not the least of the movie’s triumphs revolves around the performance of Jillian Bell, who plays the title character, a 27-year-old overweight New York woman whose doctor tells her that it’s time to shed 50 pounds. Her excesses -- food, alcohol, and hard-partying -- have put her on an early death track.

Initially resistant, the dissolute Brittany decides to become a runner. Given Brittany’s penchant for excess, it's not surprising that she becomes an addicted runner who plans to enter the grueling New York City marathon. She begins to lose weight.

Writer/director Paul Downs Collaizo primes the audience for a feel-good comedy about an acerbic, frequently dislikable woman, who changes her life so that she can become a beacon of self-transformation.

Thankfully, Collaizo follows a slightly different path. A complex character, Brittany takes herself and her running seriously but not everyone else does. As her roommate (Alice Lee) discovers, the reformed Brittany isn’t nearly as much fun as she was when she was drinking, staying out all night, and strafing others with sarcasm.

After Brittany gets crosswise with her roommate, she lands a job at an upscale Manhattan home, where she’s supposed to look after the vacationing owners’ dog. Lacking a place to stay, Brittany moves in and meets Jern (Utkarsh Ambudkar), an unashamed slacker who has taken the same house-minding job. He uses the home as his personal squat.

Brittany also acquires a support system for her running, notably a former neighbor (Michaela Watkins), a photographer who’s going through a tough divorce. Watkins character flirts with cliche, reminding us —- in case we didn’t already know — that a person’s surface seldom tells the whole story. Apparently, people who seem healthy and well-adjusted have problems, too.

Brittany also convinces a gay friend (Micah Stock) to join her running regimen. Kate Arrington portrays Brittany’s sister, who lives with her husband (Lil Rel Howery) in Brittany’s hometown, Philadelphia.

Bell can be funny and, in the movie’s final going, really annoying. That's because Brittany doesn’t deal with all the obstacles she faces with humility and grace. A scene in which she confronts and insults a heavy woman taps a little too deeply into Brittany's sour side.

Collaizo can't quite accommodate all the movie's tonal shifts (from hip comedy to serious drama) but he should be credited with trying to add some nuance to what could have been high-concept formula job: overweight woman sheds pounds, gain self-confidence and becomes a better person.

As it turns out, Brittany's greatest victory involves her realization that her weight and her capacity to love and be loved aren’t irrevocably linked. Fair enough, but I wondered whether such a conclusion might be a little too pat for a character who's smart and tough enough not to care whether her story has a spirit-lifting message.

Bob's Cinema Diary: 9/6/19 -- Satanic Panic, Vita & Virginia

I'm never sure whether films have real-world impact, but if Satanic Panic does alter anyone's behavior, it probably will be America's legion of pizza delivery people. In this case, a pizza delivery girl (Hayley Griffith) makes a delivery to a wealthy area that's way out of her normal zone. When the recipient disappears after refusing to tip, she bangs on the door, hoping to shame the stony-faced jerk who stiffed her. Our heroine might normally have gone on her way, but her moped’s nearly out-of-gas and she's afraid she won't make it home. Entering the house through a conveniently open side door, the pizza girl quickly becomes ensnared in a meeting of devil worshipers who want to turn her into a human sacrifice. Purposely overstated performances, particularly by the group's head witch (Rebecca Romijn) seem intended to give a comic spin to the proceedings, but this kind of acting also can create an amateurish feeling that may not have been what director Chelsea Stardust hoped to achieve. Gore gluttons will find enough plasma to satisfy, but too much of the movie simply doesn't work, either as straight-ahead horror or macabre comedy. Ruby Modine supplies a witty spark that's otherwise missing from a movie that aims to produce crowd-pleasing moments for horror buffs who are well enough versed in genre tropes to recognize when the movie is poking fun at them. All else aside, it may be reassuring to know that even Satanists are sensible enough to crave pizza, thus prompting the movie's most intriguing aside: Ritual sacrifices of young virgins never should be performed on an empty stomach.

Vita & Virginia

Vita & Virginia, a well-appointed look at the lesbian relationship between Vita Sackville-West (Gemma Arterton) and Virginia Woolf (Elizabeth Debicki), too often fails to break its period-piece shackles. The Bloomsbury scene depicted by director Chanya Button doesn't prove interesting or eccentric enough to shock us with its rejection of bourgeois convention. Both Vita and Virginia are married, Vita to a husband (Darren Dixon) who indulges his own same-sex interests but fears that his boldly flirtatious wife will jeopardize his public standing. Virginia's husband Leonard (Peter Ferdinando) shows more tolerance for his wife's inclinations. He publishes her books, loves her and even believes that she might benefit from a fling with Sackville-West. Isabella Rossellini shows up as Lady Sackville, a woman who clearly disapproves of Vita's undisguised recklessness. Arterton approaches her role with crisply delivered openness; Debicki's Virginia seems depressed and dreary, perhaps to suggest the despair that ultimately led Woolf to suicide. There's nothing wrong with Vita & Virginia that more unruliness wouldn't have cured. But Vita & Virginia seems too intent on becoming a movie of certifiable cultural significance to feel as if it's full of new insights.

The story of a much-loved musical

Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles traces the history of a play that has become enormously popular.

Fiddler on the Roof, a musical of enormous popularity, made its Broadway debut 55 years ago with Zero Mostel in the lead role of Tevye. By now, most musical fans know that Tevye earned his living as a dairy man who spent his days talking to God and wishing he weren't poor. Tevye also had six daughters with minds of their own.

Happily, Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles -- a documentary about the origins and continued life of a play that has been staged throughout the world -- acknowledges that the show has meaning beyond nostalgia or romanticized views of shtetl life.

Made into a musical by composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick, Fiddler retains some of the pathos found in the work of the great Yiddish writer, Sholem Aleichem, who wrote the Tevye stories. Aleichem illuminated the lives of Eastern European Jews in a fast-changing world that, unbeknownst to them, was on the brink of Holocaust extinction.

But the documentary's explanation of Fiddler’s popularity turns out to be overly broad, a celebration of the universality of Fiddler's themes, notably the clash between established tradition and creeping modernity.

But, at least as I see it, Aleichem’s genius involved finding universality in the particular. After all, Aleichem wrote in Yiddish, a language that never was widely spoken or read outside Jewish communities. (A Yiddish-language production of Fiddler currently is being staged in New York.) Aleichem captured the idiosyncratic flavors of the Yiddish-speaking world. Without that, there are no noodles in the story's universal soup.

Of course, the themes of parenting, poverty, and anti-semitism have wide resonance, but, in Aleichem's work, they’re irrevocably rooted in the Jewish world. I’m still working out how I feel about what I viewed as the documentary’s over-emphasis on universality, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy it.

Director Max Lewkowicz notes that the show wasn’t particularly well-received when it opened. Despite a lukewarm NY Times review, lines formed. Fiddler became a monster hit and later, a 1971 movie directed by Norman Jewison, who, name aside, is not Jewish.

The movie’s star — Israeli actor Topol — now 83 — talks insightfully about playing Tevye and we hear from many other actors who have appeared in Fiddler over the years.

A variety of other personalities emerge, most notably the brilliant choreographer Jerome Robbins, who brought an authoritarian approach to his direction of the stage production but remained widely admired by those he tyrannized.

Among the film’s more interesting wrinkles are glimpses of productions of Fiddler from around the world. Interestingly, all of these productions — in costume and ambiance — honor the particularity of Fiddler in ways that the film might have spent more time exploring.

Entertaining, informative and sure to please the legions who love the show, Miracle of Miracles makes one thing clear. To borrow (and distort) a line from one of the play’s many memorable songs: The sun that rose on Fiddler likely never will set.