[7.2/10] It’s time for a hot take, kids. *1776* shouldn’t have been a musical. “Sit Down John” is superb, and “The Egg” is a chuckle, and the melodic back-and-forth between John and Abigail has its charms. But for the most part, the songs here are flat and forgettable, with middling rhythms and melodies and little that’s likely to stick with you.

Worse yet, the movie feels compelled to devolve into dull efforts at frivolity. We apparently need a pun-filled tune where the representative who offered the all-important resolution makes a series of puns out of his last name. We need to have wacky bits where various delegates try to pass the drafting work onto one another. And most importantly, by god, we apparently need to know that the founding fathers were randy and needed some distaff “refreshment” before they were able to get to work.

This type of fluff and treacle might be passable if it were more funny or entertaining. Unfortunately, it’s the weak point of the film. Frolics to hear about Martha Jefferson’s wooing by her husband, or riffs on rum-drinking, or other topics not really on point for the debate over independence regularly derail the film and leave it lard-laden and overlong.

Despite that, when *1776* throws out the soundtrack, forgets about the comic or romantic set pieces outside of Independence Hall, and just focuses on the delegates to the Second Continental Congress arguing and horse-trading and politicking over the Declaration of Independence, it is a remarkably cogent and engrossing film. Even there, it occasionally goes over-the-top, but it also tracks a number of compelling threads and believable (if dramatized) bumps in the road between thirteen colonies and a new nation.

There’s a surprising number of tune-less stretches in the movie, particularly in the latter half, where the creative team seems to realize the strength of the film lies in its stylized but convincing dialogue and debate, rather than in its songs and comedy. The movie allows debates on major topics to go on for long periods without cuts or scene-changes, letting the performances and rabbling crowd fill those spaces. It’s a choice to focus on the writing and the magnitude of the moment, and it pays major dividends, particularly in the film’s last reel.

These scenes also have a force thanks to their focus on the central conflict, the endlessly committed (and obnoxious and disliked) John Adams trying to rouse a do-nothing, deadlocked Congress into action. It’s the purest throughline in the movie, and one that gives an easily-graspable form to the various challenges, disagreements, and power plays it takes to achieve independence.

Despite that focus, the show also makes room to track a series of meaningful subplots. While a few of them trail off into nowhere, most of them pay off in significant ways in the third act. The middle-of-the-road Georgia delegate, torn between his convictions and his responsibility to his constituents, eventually follows his conscience. The infirmed elder delegate returns to the chamber to break the logjam in Delaware. The ineffectual second to the film’s villain, caught between his browbeating superior, John Dickinson, and sentimental favorite Ben Franklin, rises to assert his own opinion rather than blindly following Dickinson’s lead, when everything’s on the line. The film isn’t subtle about any of these story threads, but it elevates them nonetheless.

The same goes for the film’s incredible cinematography and composition. The majority of *1776* takes place in one room -- the hall where the representatives of the various colonies verbally spar over issues great and small. Even with that limitation, cinematographer Harry Stradling Jr. manages to make each scene feel alive, swooping his camera around the different debaters and zooming in or panning around the room as necessary to keep the dramatic tension alive. This is not an action-heavy movie (outside of a bit of literal horseplay), but Stadling’s camera keeps the energy up.

Likewise, he and director Peter H. Hunt do a tremendous job of blocking and framing these sequences. Everything from the naysayers’ minuet to the fervent arguments to closing tableau is choreographed to perfection, creating depth of frame and contrasts in color and positioning that make the images jump off the screen. Apart from its high-minded themes, *1776* is a visual treat, full of aesthetic flourishes and seamless camera movement that create all manner of striking images.

Those images help rescue some less-than-inspired sequences. The aforementioned “comedy” in the form of “I can’t help write the Declaration of Independence because I’m too honry right now” is pretty execrable, but for some entertaining shot choices on a neighboring staircase. The film bites off more than it can chew in trying to encompass the horrors of war and the tragedy and hypocrisy of slavery, but works in some worthwile and complex takes on these topics and accents them with haunting lighting and a starker approach.

That same sort of impressionism serves *1776* well in the heart of the picture -- the relationship between John and Abigail. To convey the feisty but loving long-distance correspondence between husband and wife, the movie uses a gauzy filter and a little imagination to put their conversations in real time. It’s a showy move, but it works here thanks to Abigail pushing back on John better than anyone else, giving him the advice he needs to hear, and lifting him up at his lowest point. It’s the most lived-in dynamic in the movie, and it gives the film the sentimental edge it needs.

I just wish it could hold fast to that in lieu of forgettable musical numbers and other bits of broad humor that can’t batch witty repartee or ensuing drama inside the congressional meeting hall. There’s a tighter, punchier, more effective version of this movie in here somewhere, one that cuts the flab and embraces the ability for these performers, this cinematographer, and the resonant topics at play to create all the energy and excitement necessary on their own. The musical form is a great one, but *1776* hits better notes as a souped-up stage production than it does as a tuned up retelling of American Independence.