The bravest and most important movie musical of the last several years isn’t even close to being the best film musical this year — the mysteriously perfect Once is probably going to be my favorite, with an honorable mention for Hairspray, and however I wind up reacting to Sweeney Todd fitting in there someplace as well. Colma: The Musical — which had only a token theatrical release in San Francisco and San Diego, after a healthy run on the festival circuit — is flawed in the way of most films from first-timers, but it reconstructs the modern musical in ways none of those other films dare. There are moments in it that just may outshine any musical made in decades.

What’s so special? Well, for starters, this is a zero-budget indie flick that is also an unapologetic full-out traditional musical that never feels forced or weird or cloying during its musical moments. It’s utterly matter-of -fact approach to the fact that it’s characters spontaneously sing a collection of terrific new pop songs works far better than I even thought possible.

Colma: The Musical even gets away with breaking what I once called “Westal’s law” but which I now refer to as “Westal’s guideline” or on more honest days “Westal’s lame observation” — that it’s always preferable to shoot a musical on a set because the real-life locations remind the audience that it’s weird for people to be singing and dancing. Colma doesn’t care what I or anyone thinks and makes its own new rules and, so help me, I’m still giddy with the result. When Colma sings, it’s always engaging and better than that. It also introduces the world (or me, at least) to singer-songwriter H.P. Mendoza. More about him later.

Directed by Richard Wong and written by Mendoza, who also plays one of the three leads, Colma: The Musical is, in a way, half of the first-time indie films ever made, set to music. It’s the story of three late teens in a blue collar San Francisco suburb on that ever loving post-high school precipice of adulthood. Billy (Jake Moreno) is a likable but seriously passive-aggressive aspiring actor obsessing over a bad break-up with his ex-girlfriend; Rodel (Mendoza) is a dangerously smart scribbler with a dead mother, a vicious sense of humor, and, of course, serious anger issues — the fact that’s he’s gay and hasn’t yet come out to his rageaholic father, not likely to be especially tolerant, is almost secondary; Mirabel (L.A. Renigen) is the young woman who, for now anyway, suffers them both. As the story progresses, we’ll watch their three way friendship slowly deteriorate under the strain of too much drama, too much poor behavior, and the passage of time.

For serious fans of film musicals, all three of us, Colma plays almost like a sort of indie-remake of Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s It’s Always Fair Weather, another musical tale of a three-way friendship on the skids in the face of real life (which I wrote about, at length, some time ago). Director Richard Wong’s energetic use of the widescreen frame and plenty of split screen effects certainly harks back to that neglected near-masterpiece.

Still, this is 2007, not 1955 and Wong and Mendoza don’t exactly have the resources of the Arthur Freed unit behind them, but the musical numbers don’t merely make do, they quietly triumph, substituting visual invention, a relaxed variation on the West Wing “walk and talk” shot (”walk and sing”) and some extremely clever, sometimes beautiful, staging and compositions, deftly compensating for the lack of any real choreography. Of the dancing there is, its charm lay in its amateurism.

Best of all, in a big middle-finger extended in the towards the modern ADHD style of musical editing, Wong stages eight minutes of material, including two separate songs, in a single-extended shot (with a little split screen for variety). He keeps his camera moving, not vomit-cam style, just following the action, and throwing in bits of explanatory business that make the fact that our three heroes are singing through most of the shot seem just plain normal. Handclaps on the soundtrack are matched by handclapping extras who are casually aware they are in the midst of a musical number — one of the funniest conceits of Colma: The Musical is that everyone knows that characters are singing, and may even complain about it as if it were a mildly annoying habit.

All in all, Colma announces the arrival of some potentially huge filmmaking talent. The only comparison in recent filmmaking history is the post-Fosse invention of John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedvig and the Angry Inch, which is only a much better film because it’s much better written and had a powerhouse lead performer in Mitchell. In terms of sheer filmmaking wit, Richard Wong appears to be at least the equal to Mitchell, and Mendoza, a fan of Hedwig songwriter Stephen Trask as well as two-man band They Might Be Giants, more than honors his musical heroes.

But then there’s this: while I watched the first third of Colma with a big stupid grin on my face, increasingly sure that I had found the saviors of the film musical, some of that joy started to curdle into a certain amount of annoyance and tedium as the story hit its various marks, reminding us constantly that this is an indie-dramedy as well as a musical, and there it fails. To me, this is a film that is a just a rewrite, or perhaps a script-doctor, away from greatness, but, as it stands, it’s also a bit of bitter pill that outdoes the melancholy of It’s Always Fair Weather by a vast degree, but without any particular skill in terms of allowing the audience to buy into the increasingly selfish and destructive behavior of the two male leads. But, then, another musical number starts, like the brilliant, climactic “Happy Place” and that big smile, a bit wistful and sad, returns.

You can purchase Colma via Amazon, which apparently thinks it’s the gayest film ever, and it’s available through Netflix. You might also want to take a look at it’s official website. And, just to whet your appetite, here’s the trailer….

*****

A couple more Colma: The Musical loose ends.

This is the forty-plus Jewish liberal kid from multiculti West L.A. talking, but I can’t help but be delighted that a film with two Filipino-Americans in lead roles — one nonchalantly open about being gay and the other a not exactly traditionally tiny ingenue — and with the other lead filled by a Latino fair-skinned enough to play a “quirky Jewish sidekick” on stage, plays ethnicity and gender preference as background, never foreground.

Colma is not out to prove something about ethnicity or sexual preference. It’s out something to prove about musicals. As a proud, out member of the musical-American community, I support it. And don’t even think of comparing it to Rent.

Which brings up one big, reason I wouldn’t dare compare Colma to Rent; the songs are immensely better than anything you’re likely to hear in an original rock musical, ever — though sure, Hair has its moments. Since seeing Colma last week for the first time, I had to find out if there was anything more available in the way of music from H.P. Mendoza and I was happy to see, for my sake, if not his, that his entire latest album is available on line, for free at his official website. I was even happier after I listened to it.

You’ll definitely hear echoes of They Might Be Giants, Ben Folds, Aimee Mann and other alt-power-pop influences, but his pallet seems to have widened beyond even his outstanding work on the Colma soundtrack. What you’ll also hear is a straightforward approach to Mendoza’s sexual preference in what appears to be some pretty seriously autobiographical material, which would have been unheard of just a few years back. If he wants to sing about a “he” or a “boy,” he does. Find that strange…it’s your damn problem. Again, nothing to prove except that he’s a really good songwriter and musician.

Definitely, definitely worth check it out. And also, for fans of somewhat edgy humor, here’s Mendoza with an unusual drinking game promotion for Colma: The Musical...and is that real booze? (Includes Colma style cursing, including f-bombs aplenty, possibly illegal underage imbibing, and discussion with early teens Mike Huckabee might not appreciate, so probably not safe for work if anyone’s listening and depending on where you work.)