'Kiss of the Spider Woman' review: Lopez spins gold in lavish but slight musical adaptation

Courtesy of Roadside Attractions

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There’s a sequence midway through director Bill Condon’s adaptation of John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Terrence McNally’s “Kiss of the Spider Woman” that’s one of the most visually and musically electrifying numbers ever put to film. It’s pure old-Hollywood spectacle — invoking Cole Porter, Fred Astaire, and the glory days of Gene Kelly — led by a fierce, hypnotic Jennifer Lopez performance that demands the camera’s adoration. The only problem? It’s trapped inside a dreary, confused musical that can’t decide if it’s a technicolor fever dream or a suffocating Argentinian prison drama. I’ll let you guess which one works better.

Condon, of course, knows his way around a movie musical. The director of 2006’s sensational “Dreamgirls” and the writer of “Chicago,” he has the pedigree and polish to resurrect Kander and Ebb’s stylized grit. He’s also wise enough to cast Lopez as the titular Spider Woman, a figure of allure, death, and liberation. She’s a bona fide showstopper, luminous, dangerous, and self-aware, injecting every frame with a star wattage that threatens to outshine the entire film around her. It wouldn’t be a stretch to see her name floated in the supporting actress conversation; she singlehandedly elevates what might otherwise be a beautifully dressed corpse of a movie.

Based on Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel, later adapted into a play and the 1993 Tony-winning stage musical, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” has always been a tricky hybrid, part political allegory, part romantic melodrama, and part meta-musical fantasia. The original Broadway production, headlined by Chita Rivera and Brent Carver, was a bold, seductive piece of theater that used fantasy to comment on fascism, repression, and queer identity. On stage, the seams between the real and imagined were its power. On film, Condon struggles to sew them together.

Set in 1983, amid an oppressive regime in Argentina, the story centers on two cellmates: Valentin (Diego Luna, disappointingly inert), a revolutionary clinging to ideology, and Luis (Tonatiuh, a welcome surprise), an effeminate window dresser who finds refuge in his dreams of the Spider Woman. Rather than confront the brutality of his reality, Luis escapes into a vivid cinematic fantasy: a swirl of color, music, and glamour that recalls MGM’s golden era. It’s within these fantasy sequences that Condon finally wakes up, flooding the screen with dazzling choreography, gleaming production design, and a giddy love letter to classic musicals. Lopez, at 56, commands every frame she’s in. 

But whenever the fantasy fades, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” collapses. The prison scenes, grimy but emotionally vacant, lack the grit or tension that made Puig’s original story sting. Condon seems too reluctant to wade into the darkness of political torture and sexual repression, sanding down the edges of what should be an unsettling, volatile dynamic between the two men. The result is a sanitized undercurrent that makes the film’s message feel blurry and its stakes almost nonexistent.

Musically, the adaptation fares little better.

Despite Kander and Ebb’s indelible style, the film’s numbers feel oddly flat and uninspired. Signature songs from the stage version — including “Dressing Them Up” and “Over the Wall” — have been cut, stripping the score of its emotional variety and narrative propulsion.

What remains are serviceable but forgettable tunes that rarely soar, and Luna, though a fine actor, struggles vocally. Lopez, meanwhile, attacks her songs with total commitment, reminding us that her triple-threat abilities have been criminally underused since “Hustlers.” You can feel her hunger to prove herself as a true musical leading lady, and in the film’s best moments, she does.

The tragedy of Condon’s “Kiss of the Spider Woman” isn’t that it’s bad; it’s that it keeps brushing against greatness and then pulling back. You sense a filmmaker torn between homage and reinvention, between Broadway boldness and Hollywood restraint. The fantasy world dazzles. The real world deflates. And somewhere in the middle, the movie loses its soul.

At just over two hours, it feels curiously thin, as if terrified of being too theatrical or too political, when it desperately needs to be both. In an era where “Wicked” and “Wonka” are pushing the boundaries of what a musical blockbuster can be, Condon’s film feels stuck in neutral. Still, there’s something admirable in the attempt: a director swinging for the rafters, a team resurrecting a challenging property, and a movie star giving her all in the role of a lifetime. Without Jennifer Lopez, this “Spider Woman” would be dead on arrival.

Grade: C+

KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN opens in theaters Friday, October 10th.