Christina Hendricks

A stylish genre exercise...one might just as well say the L.A. story unfolds at the corner of Michael Mann and David Lynch.

This version...won't be remembered as a major one—it's too faithful and too wobbly for that—but it's an entertaining novelty version, largely justified by the casting and Gemignani's slavish devotion to the original Broadway orchestrations.

At a moment when studios and pundits have begun again to question the efficacy of sequels, Pixar’s graceful follow-up justifies the practice, when executed with smarts and heart.