In fact, Jonathan Church's production is beyond question the happiest, least forced of the various versions of "Singin' in the Rain" to reach the stage over the years, which range from a glossy star vehicle for the British performer Tommy Steele some 30 years ago to the director-choreographer Twyla Tharp's subsequent cooptation of the same material for her Broadway debut.
Leslie Halliwell, in his Film and Video Guide, felt the opposite, giving zero stars out of 4, and dismissed it as an "empty-headed, glossy star vehicle".
When I first reviewed the Fat Duck some years ago, Blumenthal, self-taught wunderkind, was putting out classic bourgeois French food of such élan that it made glossy stars out of domestic dishes.
Behind Moss and Carter, Hatchette has been nearly invisible, just like quarterbacks Brett Favre and Kurt Warner were early in their careers, like receivers Terrell Owens and Derrick Mason once were, buried on the depth chart behind brighter, more glossy stars.
There's cheeky fun in Ms. Avidon's suggestion that a glossy movie star could be as helpful a spiritual guide as the revered leaders of popular movements.
In 1985, many fans of the Smiths were bemused when their serious-minded indie rock hero turned out to be best mates with a glossy synthpop star.
But who wouldn't want to watch a glossy drama starring Papa and set on location in Florida, Cuba and Paris?
To end the opening montage of Hollywood sights and glossy American stars, Mr. Kumar comes flying through a window on a motorcycle.
"Transfixed" (called "Mauvais Genres" when it was released in France in 2001), was directed by the veteran French filmmaker Francis Girod, once a specialist in glossy melodramas starring Catherine Deneuve (whom Bo impersonates in his lip-synching nightclub act) and Romy Schneider.
We tried to gross each other out by imagining who was there the night before, like, 'Do you think they were cooking meth all night?' " And by the late 1990s, glossy pop stars like the Backstreet Boys were ascendant, not scruffy rock bands.
But the movie that had studios and distributors vying for rights wasn't the official opener, Demolition - a glossy drama starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a widower who grieves by smashing up kitchens, taking apart white goods and taking frequent, crowd-pleasing showers.
