Review: Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

Little Shop of Horrors

Rating

Director

Frank Oz

Screenplay

Howard Ashman

Length

1h 34m

Starring

Levi Stubbs, Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, Vincent Gardenia, Steve Martin, Tichina Arnold, Michelle Weeks, Tisha Campbell, Jim Belushi, John Candy, Christopher Guest, Bill Murray, Stanley Jones

MPAA Rating

PG-13

Review

The fantasy of many poor men and women is to become rich and famous. Little Shop of Horrors asks the audience to be careful what they wish for as they just might get it.

In the heart of a New York City, a failing florist sees business turn around when one of his lowly employees discovers a mysterious, exotic plant that the world’s never seen before, turning that fame into profits but with a terrible cost. Rick Moranis, hot off his success in Ghostbusters, plays the meek employee Seymour Krelborn while Vincent Gardenia plays the florist. Ellen Greene, who starred in the same role in the off-Broadway original production, plays Audrey, a squeaky-voiced blond with a penchant for bad boys, specifically the sadist dentist played by Steve Martin.

Seymour has feelings for Audrey, even going so far as to name his plant Audrey II in her honor, but struggles to reveal them to her. The plant, voiced by Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops, wants nothing more than to have its fill of blood, which Seymour initially provides willingly before it grows to a size where it needs larger reserves. This leads him to commit atrocities to sate the demanding plant who will bring him great wealth and fame.

Howard Ashman, who wrote the book and lyrics for the off-Broadway production teamed up with voice actor-turned-director Frank Oz to bring the Alan Menken/Ashman collaboration to the big screen. Although they wanted to use the darker ending of the play, test audiences were exceedingly negative about the deaths of the main characters, so a happier yet still bleak ending was settled upon. Although it wasn’t a huge box office performer, it quickly turned into a cult hit on VHS and remains an incredibly popular and well-received effort these many years later.

Although its B-movie origins are a selling point, there are moments when the film feels a bit forced. This isn’t a result of bad songs, some of them are among Menken/Ashman’s best (only those for the animated Beauty and the Beast are better). It’s more the situational humor. The Christopher Guest, Jim Belushi, and John Candy cameos are emblematic of this. While they fit with the premise, they come off as unnecessarily cheesy. Whereas the bit with Bill Murray as a masochist dental patient has almost the right amount.

Having a doo-wop group as the Greek chorus is a brilliant choice for a film set in the 1960s and they add flavor during some of the dullest moments. When you string together great songs like “Suddenly Seymour” and “Somewhere That’s Green,” both delivered wonderfully by Greene, with somewhat duller songs like “Mean Green Mother from Outer Space” and “The Meek Shall Inherit,” you get a film that has some tonal issues. There’s a bleakness to the film that captures the degradation and perceived humiliation that was living in Skid Row (but not the song, it’s terrific) and could carry its success for longer periods, as could its moral of not seeking money and fame at whatever cost. That said, the fun is not always easy to find.

Little Shop of Horrors, in spite of its many flaws, is still a gorgeous and entertaining musical extravaganza. It’s far removed from the Lerner/Loewe and Rodgers/Hammerstein era but it carves out its own niche in the countercultural space of off-Broadway and transcends those trappings to create something that can speak to a different audience than might otherwise be drawn to a musical picture.