Colma: The Musical Reviews

Colma is so blazingly original that it bursts off the screen with the sort of breathtaking energy that reminds you why you love movies in the first place.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

It's not a great film, but we sure enjoyed it more than many bigger films that try harder to convince us they're great.

Full Review

When it lets its characters express their universal youthful ennui through hook-laden tunes with clever lyrics, it works. The 'let's-put-on-a-show' attitude is a welcome relief from the navel gazing typical of coming-of-age.

Full Review | Original Score: B+

A winning amalgam of MySpace-ish self-involvement, digital video immediacy and 'Hey kids, let's put on a show' gumption.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5

Colma: the Musical makes up in heart what it lacks in glitz and real, singable songs.

Full Review

Colma works because the filmmakers believe it can and aren't listening to anyone who tells them otherwise.Take a visit to Colma, you won't regret it.

H.P. Mendoza's clever melodies and pointedly constructed rhymes rescue the movie from the detriments of its tired plot and unfocused pace.

Full Review

Suburban teenage frustration: Didn't it always go down best with a salty side of Journey? Or the Smiths?

Full Review | Original Score: 4/6

A little rough around the edges, this likable movie is filled with adolescent angst, youthful energy and hope.

There hasn't been a movie that lays out the confusion and heartbreak of the first tentative steps into adulthood this mercilessly since Ghost World.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Director Richard Wong is alert to every nuance, cleverly framing the heavily satirical situations with appropriate deadpan affection and deft use of split-screen.

Full Review

compare this with other films about being a teen (even the good ones), and few match this level of happy, resourceful creativity and unforced diversity.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5

Mendoza's 13 original numbers...provide the slender story with structure, and overall the songs are surprisingly catchy despite the bare-bones music production and the fact that of the leads, only Renigen has a standout voice.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

The songs sound like they were recorded on a toy synthesizer in someone's basement, and neither of the two male leads can sing.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4

An itty-bitty movie with a great big heart, Colma: The Musical is about how we learn to give voice -- joyfully, honestly, loudly -- to the truest parts of ourselves.

| Original Score: 4/5

This is a potentially brilliant scenario, so it's unfortunate that Colma pays so little attention to Colma; it may as well be set anywhere.

Full Review

Wonderfully staged numbers -- a raucous song in a tavern, a lovely ballad sung in a cemetery with couples dancing through the tombstones -- that give this little indie a big heart.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

breezy and irreverent in idiom, yet it examines with sometimes wry, but always unflinching, even brutal, honesty, the impact and consequences of emotional betrayal. And it does so without missing a beat, or a combination step.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

Deserves to be seen for its sheer originality and audacity.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

This is one modern movie musical that has what its slicker, star-studded, far more lavishly financed brethren, such as Chicago and Dreamgirls, lack: real joy and a giddy love for the genre that imbues every frame.

| Original Score: 3/4