There are lessons to be learned from the modest goals of this “Merrily We Roll Along”: to bring a movie audience to the life of the stage and, in so doing, to those thorny stages of life.

Yes, it feels stagey -- you were expecting realism from a musical? -- but the score is breathtaking, the lyrics scintillating, the emotions true, and as a Sondheim lyric has it, "that's the sound of a hit."

Despite one wonky misstep, it captures some real magic.

Worth the screen capture.