Just as rockets need gravity to blast off against, just as we need Philadelphia Eagles fans to remind us of what good manners aren’t, so do we need “Lord of the Dance 3D,” an essential document of bad taste that needs to go right into the time capsule. History must not forget.
What shall I hate most about Michael Flatley? Is it his Liberace Goes Bullfighting jackets? His just-about-to-pitch-a-javelin pose? The Chicagoan’s fake Irish lilt? His solitary diamond earring? The Worldwide Wrestling belt buckle, the self-congratulating fist pumps, the scarlet lining of his twinkling tailcoat? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. Hey, Zorro: If you’re wondering who stole your hat, I’ve got a tip for you.
And yet the movie of Flatley and his leggy sprites in action in Dublin (singlin’ would have been enough for me) belongs on the same shelf of the awesomely bad where “Xanadu” happily resides.
Flatley explains at the outset that in the course of assembling “the greatest dance troupe of all time” for a show that contains more cheese than Zabar’s, those pesky naysayers were telling him “it couldn’t be done.” No, Michael, you misheard. Shouldn’t be done.
Flatley, in a madness of sequined costumes that make him look like a secret love child of Siegfried and Roy who was born at Circus Circus during a Tuesday night Elvis impersonator’s act, plays a dance god who, in a series of wordless segments, eventually gets embroiled in a conflict with some bad guys in black whose costumes suggest Tron mated with a porcupine.
The hero and his chief rival — Satan of the Dance? — get into a particularly violent and nasty dance-off that culminates with the two men facing each other while playing patty-cake on their thighs. Also, remind me again: Why does the sight of people rapidly striking their heels and toes on the floor constitute entertainment?
In other scenes, Flatley takes a breather so that squadrons of female dancers can flit while the flutes and the fiddles go nuts. They (pardon me, I’m not a dance critic) spin around and put their hands on their hips and kick their feet and heave their arms in the air. All of which is exactly what happens at the Lincoln Center ballet, as far as I can tell.
My dislike of the star nearly nullifies my taste for fit girls in brief dresses (who even, in one scene, lose the costumes and dance in lingerie), but while Flatley makes Andrew Lloyd Webber look like Shakespeare, the sparkle of his ingratiation is as dazzling as an explosion at the cubic zirconia factory.