Tarzan Reviews- Page 4

[mlsheehan]

Posted: 5/10/06 at 11:53pm

BWW Tarzan preview is up...
BWW Tarzan preview

[Rentaholic2]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 12:13am

is something wrong with me if I LOVED that video?

[HughE2030]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 12:14am

Angela Lansbury, Luci Arnez, James Marden in the audience.

[YankeeGal#24]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 12:14am

I did too Rentaholic2!

Posted: 5/11/06 at 12:15am

No. I loved it too. Maybe I'll give up on Allen from Hot Feet and have a baby gorilla with Tarzan. Is he hot or am I ovulating?

[mlsheehan]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 12:16am

You are supposed to love it. It's a preview. It makes the show look as good as possible...marketing.

[donna_darko_23]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 12:20am

Well, at least they got the marketing part right. From what it seem with all the negatives reviews they'll need good marketing to get anyone other than a family with young children to come.

[YankeeGal#24]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 12:21am

When do the Post and Daily News reviews usually come out? Anyone know?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 12:21am

Wasington Post is Negative:

"You Tarzan. Me looking at watch.

Disney's gone back to the jungle -- the scene of its greatest stage success, "The Lion King" -- for an ape's-eye view of "Tarzan," a Broadway extension of the company's 1999 animated movie. The show, which opened last night at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, has gorillas in midair, a potential teenybopper idol in loincloth and Phil Collins as show-tune guy.

What it doesn't have much of is drama, and so after you've finished admiring director-designer Bob Crowley's bouncing primates and curtains of green streamers -- it's as if the stage is wrapped in a hula skirt -- you wait for some other appeal to the senses. And then wait some more. Neither a rash of Collins's sound-alike pop ditties nor David Henry Hwang's libretto offers anything like a stirring crescendo. "Tarzan" seems content to mark time with shimmering landscapes and simian calisthenics.

And where the musicalized story of the ape man is concerned, it don't mean a thing if it's just got those swings.
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As set designer, Crowley has a glorious eye, a talent he's demonstrated on projects as diverse as "The History Boys" and Disney's "Aida." As for his skills as a director: Did we mention that he designs a heck of a set?

No one who put together this production seems to have noticed that almost nothing happens in Act 1. The show's first hour is a slog through the story of Tarzan's orphaning and rescue by a "tribe" of gorillas.
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Occasionally, a familiar Collins tune from the Disney movie crops up: "You'll Be in My Heart," for example, is sung twice. Other numbers that Collins has added for Broadway just sort of trail off, as they might on the radio.

Such is the fly-by wispiness of "Tarzan," a production with pretty surfaces that bungees unremarkably into thin air.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/10/AR2006051002425.html

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 12:25am

USA Today gives it Three out of Four Stars:

"Certainly, the House of Mickey Mouse did not stint on other aspects of this production, which opened Wednesday at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. From Bob Crowley's lush, fanciful scenic and costume design to its intricate uses of animation and projected images, Tarzan offers plenty of the flash considered catnip for tourists and casual fans.

Here, though, it's not empty flash. Not since I saw Elton John's Billy Elliot in London last year have I been as impressed with the uncynical warmth and charm of a kid-friendly musical. Like Elliot, Tarzan has a score by a British pop star, Phil Collins, who reintroduces his adult-contemporary hit You'll Be in My Heart and a few other tunes he wrote for Disney's Tarzan soundtrack. Most songs are new and blend mildly agreeable melodies and Afrocentric rhythms with the odd nod to Gilbert and Sullivan.

But it's David Henry Hwang's sprightly libretto that makes this Tarzan fly. Hwang, whose credits range from Disney's Aida to the Tony Award-winning drama M. Butterfly, contributes a script with a light but full heart, one that aims to amuse and enlighten children without patronizing them, or us.
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Watching these mammals cavort, I found myself thinking of a more highbrow show that hit Broadway recently, The Drowsy Chaperone, which takes a swipe at Disney while lamenting the sorry state of musical theater.

Tarzan is no more a major new musical than Chaperone is. But I'll take the former's good-natured exuberance over the latter's preening irony any day of the week."



http://www.usatoday.com/life/theater/reviews/2006-05-10-tarzan_x.htm

Updated On: 5/11/06 at 12:25 AM

[Calvin]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 12:26am

You Tarzan. Me looking for more originality in review ledes.

Wouldn't that be a vine idea? Must gorilla now. Carol Burnett yelling at me.

[Hawker]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 12:28am

Here would have been my one question to Crowley: Stanley Kubrick didn't come close to getting the ape thing right in 2001, Given you've had 40 more years to get it right, why do they look more like humans than his anorexic apes?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 12:28am

CBS-TV gives it 4 out of 10:

"Disney has a lot of luck turning its animated movies into Broadway shows. "Beauty and the Beast" has been running for 12 years, "The Lion King" remains one of the greatest spectacles ever put on Broadway. It's hard to say that "Tarzan" is a misstep, with advance ticket sales reportedly hovering around $20 million, and no doubt lots of families will buy multiple blocks of tickets. But if you haven't bought a ticket yet, read on.
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Tarzan" has a promising start -- a brilliantly staged shipwreck -- but the musical itself doesn't fly at all.

Collins new music here is dull, and so is the pacing. And there's no romantic chemistry between Tarzan and Jane.

Even in a family-friendly version, Tarzan is essentially the tale of a wild man tamed by a civilized woman; Disney's animated version had a rangy, strapping Tarzan with rippling muscles and enormous feet, wink, wink. But Broadway's leading man, Josh Strickland, a former "American Idol" contestant, makes a very boyish Tarzan -- hardly a beast that needs to be tamed. However, he is in desperate need of a haircut. Throughout most of the show, his face is obscured by dreadlocks.

This "Tarzan" is ultimately a weakling -- a really, really rich weakling."

http://wcbstv.com/entertainment/local_story_131000741.html

[MeGustaJake]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 12:37am

That video was awesome! I can't wait to see this in just a little over two weeks :)

The reviews aren't really getting me down. I loved "Beauty and the Beast" and "Aida", probably even more than "The Lion King".

[maybe1day]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 12:46am

if anything, i'd buy a cheap ticket just to see the full shipwreck scene...the show may not have any real depth, but hey, if it gets another 10 year old interested in theater, than so be it. try taking a little kid to go see piazza or something like that. they'd probably never wanna go back. they need something nice and shallow to draw their attention in. just my opinion...

[Rentaholic2]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 12:50am

the USA Today review praised the things the others tore apart (the book, the show's warmth). I don't think I can help from be suckered in to liking this show, even if the critics don't.

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 1:08am

The shipwreck can be seen in the video preview. That's all it is.

What's hilarious is when they descend the wall as if they were climbing onto the beach out of the water, and they have two GIANT ropes attached to them. We know they're suspended in the air, but there's a better way to do it. Are they pulling something out of the water? Are they connected to the sinking ship? It's just hilarious.

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 1:12am

I'm not gonna lie. I like some of the music from the movie.

But I just watched the video thingy, and this seriously looks like something that belongs in a Disney theme park, not on Broadway.

Updated On: 5/11/06 at 01:12 AM

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 1:15am

I LOVE the film soundtrack, too.

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 1:16am

Well, the video preview SOUNDS good.

[maybe1day]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 1:20am

yea, i'll definitly be ordering that...

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 1:24am

The video preview is specifically manipulative. They show only scenes very close up, play only songs from the film (which sound garbled here anyway), and are all in dim lighting. Everything to make the show LOOK good. That's as good as it gets.

[neddyfrank2]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 1:24am

Who played young Tarzan tonight, and which one of the kids is in the video?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 1:25am

John Simon in Bloomberg is Negative:

"``Tarzan' does for gorillas what ``Lestat' does for vampires -- very little. As I watched the men and women on stage do cartwheels and somersaults and swing over our heads, I wondered: Are these the most anthropoid simians or the most apelike humans?

That's how I kept amused, something the musical that opened last night at the Richard Rodgers Theatre wouldn't do for me, unless sneering smiles count as laughter. The garishly hirsute ape costumes and trendily long-haired wigs do equal injustice to man and monkey. But that is nothing compared to what David Henry Hwang's book and Phil Collins's score do to the show.

The first directorial venture of the noted designer Bob Crowley, this is very much designer's theater, with his sets and costumes trying to out-act the cast. It's no fault of the performers: Given such material, you'd need alchemists, not actors, to make something of it.

Like ``Lestat,' ``Tarzan' manages the not inconsiderable achievement of lacking a single memorable song.
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Initially promising, the very visuals let us down. Jungle vegetation, fauna and flora, especially in a dance sequence, have a dopey comic-strip look, and even the good Natasha Katz's lighting goes awry.

Burroughs began writing when, after reading some pulp fiction, he observed, ``I can write something just as rotten as this.' Actually, he wrote quite well. It is the authors of the Disney cartoon film ``Tarzan,' on which the show is largely based, who write rotten."


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000088&sid=aqxBDl727WBo&refer=culture

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 5/11/06 at 1:27am

Most of these reviews dicuss DISNEY
The Sets, mostly Positive
the Lights, also positive
the book: negitive
score: disapointing
and the cast: like nothing
that is sad
Hard working Actors given not good material.
But some good quotes and enough Money to keep it running
it will be around a while