In the biggest news to hit the undersexed film writer community since the Great Natalie Portman/Mila Kunis Overload of ’09, Kristen Bell will play Christina Aguilera’s main rival in the upcoming musical “Burlesque,” and it’s sent the Internet all aflutter. Soulless popster Aguilera will play a small town girl with a big voice who starts working in an LA burlesque club, “reminiscent of the nightclub in Bob Fosse’s “Cabaret.” Great, so even the production design will be derivative…
Bell will play Nikki, the lead dancer at the club “who spirals out of control when Aguilera’s character suddenly gets the spotlight.”Also in the cast, as we previously reported, are Stanley Tucci, as the club’s manager, and Cher, as a veteran dancer. We like Bell plenty, she was charming and funny in “Veronica Mars”, and showed dramatic chops in a short arc in the late lamented “Deadwood,” but no-one’s quite worked out how to use her on the big screen — witness the abysmal “Couples Retreat,” out this weekend, or the upcoming “When In Rome” (the trailer of which is embedded below), which, as you’ll see, looks to be an early front-runner for the worst film of 2010.
Unfortunately, “Burlesque” isn’t likely to break the run, being directed by Steve Antin, one of the, erm, brains behind the Pussycat Dolls.