Christ, Geoff, why such hostility? Not a fan of musicals?
I have no problem with musicals. I love Grease, West Side Story, Rent, etc... but those movies make sense to me. Romance & Cigarettes didn't. At least not the first time. Perhaps it was the shock of seeing 3 Sopranos cast members doing it. Could they be type cast after all?
I don't know, I thought it was an original film that consciously subverted expectations and worked on recurring ones: the Sopranos cast, as you mentioned, not to mention Kate Winslet as some current-day slut (keep in mind she's noted for period costume dramas); as for Walken, he didn't look out of place at all - have you seen the video for Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice"?
It'd be interesting (to me) to ask why those other musicals make sense to you (despite aesthetic stuff like songs intruding upon narrative, breaking the fourth wall, etc.) but this one doesn't. What do you even mean by "sense" (normally that's used in relation to "making sense of the story")? Was it a case of viewer expectations being totally out of line with what the film offers?
I don't think all of the film works, but I at least thought it was good. But I knew going in that it was a musical.
...dot com bold typeface rhetoric. You go clickety click and get your head split. 'The hell you look like on a message board Discussing whether or not the Brother is hardcore?
