Madonna's big ego trip: subsuming the legend of Eva Duarte Perón into her very own. "Local girl makes good," as one of her lines sums up the rags-to-riches fairy tale. Or as the one-man chorus of Antonio Banderas grudgingly puts it: "She had her moments, she had some style." In honesty, she looks a little shopworn, a little careworn, for the role, at the early stages of it if not the final, physical-disintegration stages. But that just enlarges the scope of the trip. Andrew Lloyd Webber's pop opera is sufficiently big even without Madonna's ego. And in between the two or three nice melodic turns of phrase, we have to endure the interminable rush and jumble of expository lyrics by Tim Rice. Maybe the human intimacy of a stage production makes all that hard work more sympathetic; on screen, it's just a grind. Directed by Alan Parker. (1996) — Duncan Shepherd
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