It fails spectacularly at the number one thing a decent film should do, which is tell a story.

The characters are mere suggestions, the acting is awful, and the production design/technicals are all over the place except for the sound mix.

It also violates the number-one rule of the music-based film or movie musical: having musical numbers that both don't advance the plot and go on far too long. The key offender is the title song, of which all nine minutes are performed onscreen. All nine.

There's a nine-minute song in "hairspray" too, but it takes the film from climax to resolution and had multiple breaks of dialogue scenes to boot.