YMMV / West Side Story

For the 1961 film, see here.

For the 2021 film, see here.

---

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • "When you come, use the back door."
  • You’d better believe the LGBT community has quoted the line “I feel pretty and witty and gay” a lot.^note Funnily enough, this is entirely due to the film adaptation moving the song to an earlier point and then needing a word to rhyme with “today,”, rather than the original “bright” with “tonight.”
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Questionable as to whether Chino's motive to kill Tony is driven by the latter's relationship with Maria, Tony's murder of Chino's best friend Bernardo, or a mixture of both. Can depend on the production.
  • Did Anita know that Bernardo killed Riff before he was killed by Tony? When Chino explained what happened to Maria, he left out this detail and Maria only found out when Tony told her. Depending on whether Anita knew or not, it makes her anger at Tony either come across as a severe case of Moral Myopia or understandable grief.
  • Is Anybodys a straight, cisgender girl who just happens to be a tomboy? Or is she a butch lesbian, or even a transgender boy? The stage directions claim that she falls in love with Action, but nothing in the actual dialogue implies this, so the character can be played in different ways. Notably, the 2021 film explicitly makes him a trans boy.
  • Did Bernardo really mean to kill Riff or not? When Tony tells Maria "'Nardo didn't mean it either", does he mean that it was an impulsive act of rage, like Tony's own subsequent killing of Bernardo or that it was literally an accident? Nothing in the stage directions for the Rumble imply that it's an accident, and in fact Bernardo is described as "triumphant" afterwards, but in both of the two film versions, the stabbing is clearly an accident, and Bernardo's reaction is My God, What Have I Done?
  • Would the Jets really have gang-raped Anita if Doc hadn't intervened? Or were they just taunting her with the threat of sexual assault, without meaning to carry it out?
• Angst? What Angst?: The stage version of "Gee, Officer Krupke". The Jets try to cheer themselves up after Riff's death. However, the song they sing is the most over the top, comedic number in the entire show, which makes its placement quite jarring. Stephen Sondheim was responsible for getting it moved to earlier in the film, as he didn't believe a vaudevillian number had any place appearing once the story shifted into a tragedy.
• Anvilicious: Maria's closing speech where she chews out everyone over Tony's death.
  Maria: [holding a gun] You all killed him! And my brother, and Riff. Not with bullets, or guns, with hate. Well, now I can kill, too, because now I have hate!
• Award Snub: It lost that year's Tony to The Music Man.
• Broken Base:
  • Fans are divided on whether the the stage version's song order ("Cool" before the rumble scene and "I Feel Pretty" and "Gee, Officer Krupke" after) or the film version's song order (the reverse) is superior.
  • Viewers, including those on This Very Wiki, are divided on whether Anita lying to Doc and the Jets that Chino murdered Maria was justified or not. While no one disagrees that the Jets nearly raping her is absolutely despicable and she has every right to be upset about it, it's proven divisive whether such a traumatic experience justifies her lie or if she was still wrong for trying to hurt Maria and Tony even though they had nothing to do with it, especially since the lie leads directly to Tony's death.
  • The 2020 Broadway revival wound up being quite divisive. Some thought it a daring take on the story, with bold choices that resulted in an experience of the show unlike any other. Others thought it was a pretentious and aimless production that felt like it was being dark for the sake of being dark, and made major changes just to look different. And that's not getting into the highly controversial casting of Amar Ramasar.
    • The decision to make the Jets a mixed-race gang with several black members. Some felt this was a brilliant update that fixed the issue of Irish/Italian/Polish-Americans no longer being seen as marginalized groups by modern audiences (see Values Dissonance below) and strengthened the theme of the gangs being Mirroring Factions. Others felt that the change caused the show's themes about racism to be underplayed and played into harmful media stereotypes about black people being criminals.
    • The rain in the production was quite divisive. To some, it was a major highlight, making for a truly striking visual. Others thought it unnecessary, used far too much, and was responsible for the many injuries that the cast sustained during the run.
    • The use of cameras either provided more intense emotion and drama thanks to the closeups, or was completely redundant since the emotion can be seen without it, and the point of theatre is to watch someone live onstage, not a camera closeup of them.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Anita! It shouldn't come as a surprise, since she's a Composite Character of The Nurse from Romeo & Juliet, who is one of the play's most popular characters. She gets several great songs, and gets to influence the plot in some very interesting ways. Tellingly, Rita Moreno's performance in the 1961 film got her the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. And in the 2021 film, Ariana DeBose was billed second (with Rachel Zegler getting the And Starring credit as Maria), even calling Anita a "dream role". And she also won Best Supporting Actress, cementing Anita as one of the only three characters in film history that two separate actors have won Oscars for playing, alongside Vito Corleone and The Joker.
  • Anybodys is a relatively minor character but, being the only female wannabe Jet, she stands out. It helps that she's a rare portrayal of a 50s era tomboy. As time has gone on, her character has been ripe for interpretation; on whether she's possibly a lesbian or transgender. It ended up becoming common to have Anybodys portrayed by trans or non-binary actors, and the 2021 film made the character a trans man.
• Evil Is Cool: Though not truly evil, the Sharks and Jets are still violent, hateful gangs who are absolutely overflowing with badass style. This is especially true of their respective leaders Riff and Bernardo.
• Fair for Its Day: The musical can seem a little stereotypical today with its portrayal of Puerto Ricans, but for the time it was written in, the 1950s, it was revolutionary in that it had sympathetic minority main characters and touched on subjects such as immigration and the devastating effects of racism, poverty, and gang violence. You could argue that the reason for the Puerto Rican characters seeming stereotypical is that they are immigrants who are still living in segregated communities, where the "stereotypical" accents and the old folkways linger a little longer. That's not prejudice, but social realism - which was also a new idea in the 1950s. Likewise, the white gang? Eastern and Southern Europeans (like the Polish Tony) were not considered "as white" as Western Europeans at the time and weren't treated much better or differently than the Puerto Ricans (which, arguably, was part of the whole point).
• Faux Symbolism: The virginal Maria wears a white dress to her first dance (and unsuccessfully asks Anita to dye it red so she'll look more "grown up"), but a red one following the loss of her virginity to Tony. Also, in the final scenes, she's wearing a black shawl around her head. Probably representing her mourning for her brother, but it comes in handy when she has to mourn Tony as well.
• Harsher in Hindsight: "America" has a couple:
  • The line of "the money owing" is this because, in 2016, the government of Puerto Rico started to miss payments on its debt, requiring the government of the United States to step in.
  • The line "Let it sink back in the ocean" from the same song becomes this after Puerto Rico was ravaged by Hurricane Maria in 2017, with the US government being criticized for not doing enough to help. The 2021 film removes this line, presumably for that very reason.
  • For that matter, the line "Nobody knows in America/Puerto Rico's in America" is particularly relevant to the above situations, as both cases revealed that, indeed, quite a lot of people in the continental U.S. don't know that Puerto Rico is an U.S. territory.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: One line in "Gee, Officer Krupke" is "Leapin' lizards! That's why I'm so bad!" – "Leapin' lizards!" was the catchphrase of Little Orphan Annie, and Martin Charnin, who created the role of the minor Jet Big Deal, would go on to be the lyricist and original stage director of the musical Annie twenty years later.
• Ho Yay: Playwright Arthur Laurents (a gay man himself) supported the idea that Tony and Riff may have previously been lovers and that Riff is still in love with Tony even though the latter has moved on. Under his direction, the 2009 Broadway revival played up the subtext. Of course, they are based on Romeo and Mercutio.
• It Was His Sled: Tony dies. Though in fairness, Maria not dying is a big case of Not His Sled from the source material.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Bernardo is a gang leader who hates his new home and is driven by his hatred for the Jets. However, given all the discrimination he faces in America, can you really blame him? Same goes for all the other Sharks. Noticeably, Bernardo states that the Jets jumped him during his first week in New York. While that doesn't justify his war against them, it certainly explains his actions. Not to mention, when he kills Riff, Bernardo appears utterly horrified by what he's done before his life is taken as well.
  • Much like his rival, Riff also shamelessly leads a gang and is obsessively hateful towards the Sharks. But while he doesn't have it quite as bad, him and the other Jets are still hit with plenty of prejudice and mistreatment as well, which has shaped them into the delinquents that they are. He's also implied to have somehow lost his parents and to have an uncle whom he dislikes as his only family. And while he may be violent and looking for a fight, his death is still portrayed as a tragic moment, with even the Sharks stunned by it.
  • Chino. Not only does he lose his fiancée to another guy, but that guy winds up killing his best friend. His murder of Tony is inexcusable, but it's very easy to see why he did it. Making matters worse is that he'll be facing at the very least some serious jail time for this crime, making him the only gang member who doesn't get to bask in their feud's dissolution.
  • Anita. She was understandably distraught and angry after everything that happened, from the murder of her boyfriend to the Attempted Rape she suffered, but her malicious lie that Chino killed Maria that she sent to Tony, leading to his eventual death, was inexcusable.
• Memetic Mutation: A rare case of a memetic dance — the Jets snapping their fingers and leaping in the air.
  ''When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way...!"
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • The entire argument over which gang is more sympathetic. It completely spits in the face the theme that both sides are adding to the conflict.
  • Many older viewers cite Doc's "You kids make this world lousy!" monologue as a condemnation of young people, conveniently forgetting the line that follows it.
  Action: We didn't make it, Doc.
• Moral Event Horizon: It's pretty hard to root for the Jets after they attempt to rape Anita. Granted, the entire point is to not root for either side.
  • Heck, Anita herself, in spite of the above, may have crossed the line by her malicious lie that Maria was killed by Chino, leading to Tony seeking his death long enough to get murdered, despite finding out Maria was alive. By the time the ending transpired, she made her exit and was not present to face the guilt or consequences.
• Narm:
  • A lot of the slang used by the Jets is cringe-worthy by today's standards. Ironically, it's not even real '50s slang, but was invented by the writers so as not to date the piece.
  • Anita's section of "Tonight," with her simply wanting to get laid being given the exact same dramatic weight as the rumble.
• Older Than They Think: This adaptation of Romeo & Juliet spares the Juliet analogue, but there are older versions of the story that Shakespeare took his inspiration from that have Juliet surviving the tragedy and becoming a nun.
• Once Original, Now Overdone: It can seem horribly cliché nowadays — not least because it's adapting Romeo and Juliet, which itself underwhelms many readers who find it trite, shallow, and immature. There's also the fact that it's meant to be against bigotry and racism, but the Sharks have less stage/screen time than the Jets and the 1961 film has white performers in Brownface with affected accents playing Puerto Ricans with the only actual Latina actor in the cast also subjected to said brownface (though the 2021 film does use actual Latinx actors instead).
• One-Scene Wonder: In the stage version, the unnamed girl who sings the song "Somewhere".
• Overshadowed by Controversy: The 2020 Broadway production directed by Ivan Van Hove was largely overshadowed by the casting of Amar Ramasar as Bernardo, as Ramasar had been fired from the New York City Ballet in 2018 for sharing a female colleague's nude photos without her consent. When the Actor's Equity union defended Ramasar's role in the show, a series of protests followed outside the theater pushing for Ramasar to be fired, and continued throughout the show's run until the closing of Broadway due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Not helping were other controversies surrounding perceived misogyny in the revival itself, specifically the decision to cut most of the female-centric scenes (such as Maria's solo "I Feel Pretty") and a more explicit rendition of Anita's assault scene.
• Questionable Casting:
  • The large number of minorities playing Jets in the 2020 revival ran into some criticism on how this change underplays the message of racism in the story.
  • Amar Ramasar as Bernardo in the 2020 revival was a major source of division. While universally regarded as an excellent dancer, his acting is much more contentious. And of course, there's the fact that Ramasar is an infamously controversial figure, and his involvement brought quite a bit of bad press to an already divisive revival.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: Weirdly, many fans have expressed this sentiment with regards to the main plot line and leads themselves: go onto any internet comment section or discussion about the film and be prepared to find lamentations that Tony and Maria are uninteresting compared to Riff, Anita, Bernardo, and other supporting characters, that the two of them have no chemistry, and that the dance numbers that the Sharks and Jets do are much more entertaining than the romance itself. Doesn't help that, as Romeo and Juliet expies, Tony and Maria suffer from a severe case of Strangled by the Red String, making the relationship between Anita and Bernardo both more believable and funner to watch.
• Signature Song:
  • "America"
  • "Somewhere"
• Too Cool to Live: Riff and Bernardo are two of the most charismatic, badass, and enjoyable characters in the show, which makes it all the more tragic when they die in "The Rumble".
• Trans Audience Interpretation: Anybodys was originally portrayed as a 1950s era tomboy, but the character's gender nonconformity has allowed various interpretations of their gender identity, adding a new layer to the character's strong desire to be accepted by the masculine Jets. West Side Story (2021) went full Adaptational Gender Identity and wrote the character as a trans boy.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Anita and her friends in the stage version of "America". In the movies, they're opposing Bernardo and all of the guys, making it a battle of equals. Onstage, though, they all gang up on Rosalia, making the playing field uneven and causing them to feel a bit like bullies, picking on someone for thinking differently.
  • In the musical as well as both films, Maria immediately forgiving Tony for killing her brother, refusing to let Tony turn himself in, and never mourning the death of her brother after the initial confrontation can make Maria come across as a bit callous to some. There's also the fact that by eloping with Tony, she's willing to abandon her parents (who, unlike Juliet's parents, have never mistreated her) without a word, on the very same night that they've lost their son, no less – this probably explains why the 2021 version has her and Bernardo apparently be orphans instead.
  • Anita also, for reneging on her agreeing to Maria to help out Tony. It was beyond the pale what the Jets did to her, but so was her passing along a lie that Maria was killed by Chino.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The setting of the story. The "West Side" of "West Side Story" is the Upper West Side in Manhattan. In the 1950's, the Upper West Side was a rough neighborhood known for tenement housing and crime. However, urban renewal throughout the latter half of the 20th century revamped the area, and it is now known for being one of the most affluent areas in all five boroughs. The 1961 movie filmed some of its exterior shots in and around Lincoln Square, using buildings that were about to be torn down. Present-day Lincoln Square is home to Lincoln Center, which is the home stage for the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, and the New York City Ballet, as well as the Juilliard School and the School of American Ballet.
• Values Dissonance:
  • "You're a girl, Anybodys. Be a girl!" is supposed to be part of Tony objecting to the senseless gang violence, but now it just sounds sexist, as if the violence is especially bad because even a girl wants to fight. Due to the ambiguity over Anybodys' gender identity (some productions play the character as a transgender boy), there's another layer of dissonance added in that they might be misgendering Anybodys on top of the sexism. Unsurprisingly, the 2021 film remake (which portrays Anybodys as a trans boy) cuts this line.
  • In "Gee Officer Krupke", the reasons for the Jets being delinquents are pretty fair (My father is a bastard/My ma's an S.O.B./My grandpa's always plastered), until we get to "My sister wears a mustache" and "My brother wears a dress", which sounds pretty ignorant against crossdressers and trans people.
  • How the story originally treats the ethnic groups involved is also clearly a product of its time. The story treats Puerto Ricans as immigrants, with a good portion of the bigotry they receive ironically coming from a group of people who are either descended from European immigrants or are such themselves. This may have been commonplace at the time of release, but it's fallen out of use due to it being both politically and geographically incorrect. Puerto Rico is a commonwealth instead of a full-fledged state, but Puerto Ricans are American citizens. If anything, many Puerto Ricans take offense to being called immigrants thanks to their pride as Americans. (To be fair, "America" actually points out that "Puerto Rico's in America.") Meanwhile, at the time the show was written, Irish, Italian, and Polish Americans (most of whom were Catholics) were still facing discrimination, therefore strengthening the story's Aesop. Nowadays, shifts in immigrant demographics and social mobility have placed those groups at approximately the same level as WASPs. Thus, the parallels between the Jets and Sharks are lost on modern viewers, and their feud seems less like "two oppressed immigrant groups lashing out at each other because they can't fight the system," and more like "racist whites attacking Latinos, who get equal blame for defending themselves." For this reason, the 2020 Broadway revival made the gangs mixed-race with members of every skin color on both sides.
• Values Resonance:
  • The entire musical's themes about racism, class, violence, and sexism are still relevant decades after the show was written in the 1950s. When the 2021 film adaptation of the show was released, many critics noted the themes were just as relevant as they were when the 1961 version was produced.
  • The song "America", in which the Puerto Ricans discuss how it feels to live in America and the differences between it and their homeland, feels a lot more relevant today with regards to the treatment of immigrants and Mexicans.
  • Maria calling out both gangs for using hatred as a weapon after Tony dies. Even decades later, the message still rings true with regards to racism.
• The Woobie:
  • Tony is a Nice Guy trying to leave his delinquent past behind him, only to get roped back into it. His hopes of stopping the Jets and Sharks' increasing conflict don't go as planned, with his and Maria's newfound love causing their violence to get fatal, inadvertently getting his best friend Riff killed. In his grief, Tony momentarily loses his cool and takes lethal revenge on Bernardo for this, now making him a fugitive who can never return home again. After all that, though, it looks like his plan to escape to a new life with Maria will come to fruition, only for circumstances out of his control to make matters even worse and lead him to believe that Maria is dead. Not wanting to live without his love, Tony actively seeks out a vengeful Chino in the hopes that he'll kill him. Once Chino sees him, he's all too happy to fulfill this wish, mere seconds after Tony discovers that Maria actually was alive.
  • Maria is an innocent young girl whose life gets quite screwed up in a short amount of time. She falls in love with a former Jet, Tony. Which is quite inconvenient given her brother Bernardo leads the opposing Sharks. Things obviously get ugly, with Tony killing Bernardo in retaliation for him drawing first blood. Grief stricken, Maria's love for Tony persists and she agrees to leave her new home behind to escape with him. Sadly, their plans get screwed up and as a result, she witnesses Tony getting gunned down, holding him as the life drains from his body. With both her love and brother dead, a heartbroken Maria lashes out at the gangs, so enraged she almost finds it in her to shoot them.
  • Anita is the fun-loving girlfriend of Shark leader Bernardo whose cheery disposition is destroyed when he dies in his gang war. Shortly after, she discovers that his sister Maria is still involved with the man who killed her love. After furiously chewing her out, she relents after hearing how strong Maria's love is. Reluctantly, she helps Maria in her plan to run away with Tony. Unfortunately, when she she tries to relay crucial info to the Jets, they violently assault her, almost raping her before they're stopped. After previously criticizing Bernardo's obsessive war, this traumatic experience causes her to declare he was right as she leaves while sabotaging Maria's plot.

---