YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN Reviews

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 6:19pm

It's a bit early for the major critics to start chiming in, but since this is the mega-hyped show of the season, a couple of reviews from some unusual sources are already online. Might as well toss them in the mix:


Blogcritics.org is Mixed-to-Positive:

"The new Broadway musical Young Frankenstein is nothing if not too much. It has to be colossal, larger than life, overwhelming – being a fun little musical is not an option. If it hasn’t knocked you out of your seat, it’s a failure. Or so the hype and expectation would lead you to believe. The preview audience I saw it with was determined to have a great time, and indeed they seemed to get what they wanted......

.....As at Spamalot, another Broadway hit based on a beloved 1970s film comedy, the audience anticipates the familiar material, and applauds and laughs at the setups, preparing to go wild over the old jokes before they ever actually happen. This phenomenon is mildly amusing in itself, but spontaneous it ain’t.

There is new material as well, some good, some less so, but the audience’s need to re-experience the movie’s highlights is a bit of a trap, at least for the book (co-written by Brooks and Thomas Meehan). Brooks’s music and lyrics may be uneven, but they are his best opportunity to create something new here. The songs are pleasingly well crafted and, I’m happy to report, appropriately ridiculous.........The people behind this show are making a Herculean effort. But they might actually be better off relaxing a bit and just being funny. When they do that, and it does happen several times in 150 minutes, this over-amplified, overgrown theme-park ride of a show seems worth all the fuss.

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/11/08/134214.php



New York Jewish Week is a Rave:

"He may not have invented Hollywood, but the irrepressible Brooks certainly reinvented it in the last few decades of the 20th century, opening up a genre of no-holds-barred satire that ultimately spawned everything from the “Airplane” series to the work of Sarah Silverman and Sacha Baron Cohen. Now, with the double whammy of “The Producers” and “Young Frankenstein,” Brooks has also resurrected and redefined the Broadway book musical.

By modeling his musicals so closely on his own classic films that he can directly import the characters, plot and even most of the lines (adding tuneful but forgettable songs, and using over-the-top special effects and extravagant production numbers), Brooks has come up with a sure-fire formula for the most profitable kind of splashy, low-brow entertainment one can imagine.

While the cast lacks a box office star of the stature of Nathan Lane or Matthew Broderick, Brooks has put together a team of extremely gifted performers, and many of them virtually eclipse the memories of their predecessors in the 1974 cult classic. This does not, unfortunately, include Roger Bart, who, while he was superb in the role of Carmen Ghia in “The Producers,” here plays the mad scientist without the fierce intelligence and carefully calibrated hysteria of the incomparable Gene Wilder. Bart’s performance is more reminiscent of the low-key work of the late John Ritter, with his trademark befuddled and benighted air......

....All of this is clearly very timely; there are many connections one could make with the current debates about stem-cell research, cloning and the uses of bioengineering. But what makes this theme also deeply Jewish, besides the fun that Brooks still likes to poke at German accents, is the fantasy that it enacts of the Jew as the self-aware, perennial outsider. (What Jew wouldn’t want to trade Eddie Cantor for Fred Astaire?) Brooks once said of the film that the Monster represents the part of Victor that the mob hates — his imagination. The story, then, is about the triumph of creativity, which becomes, as in the classic Jewish legend of the Golem, the true source of power. No one has done a better job than Brooks of taking the feelings of inferiority engendered by Jewish vulnerability and transmuting them into both cinematic and theatrical gold."

http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c346_a954/The_Arts/Theatre.html

Updated On: 11/8/07 at 06:19 PM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 7:08pm

OK, here's the first major one -- Variety and it's Mixed:

"A funny thing happened on the way to Broadway. Actually, not so funny. When it tried out in Seattle over summer, Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein" had most of the elements in place to suggest a winning new monster musical was percolating in the lab. All it required was tightening and a little work to nurture its own personality, instead of just replicating the gags of Brooks' 1974 film. Well, the editing has been minimal and the development even less. If the robust advance -- reportedly north of $30 million -- is any indication, audiences hungry for a big, splashy comedy might not care. But a show that could have been a blast ends up being just good enough.

While that limitation seems destined to engender little admiration in the theater community, it's unlikely to deter the tourist traffic vital to keep an expensive production like this afloat on Broadway.

But lightning hasn't struck twice. When Brooks' "The Producers" opened in 2001, it brought a shot of adrenaline to the Rialto and a self-satirizing irreverence (subsequently much-imitated) to the musical comedy, crowning Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick as bona fide stage royalty.

"Young Frankenstein" has no shortage of chuckles, a stellar cast and generous production values (full appreciation of which can be found in Variety's Seattle review of Aug. 24). But it's a far more mechanical creation, with little of the heart or liberating belly laughs of its predecessor.

Director-choreographer Susan Stroman has crafted zesty numbers in the monster mash "Transylvania Mania" and Irving Berlin's "Puttin' on the Ritz," expanded from the film. But nothing here even comes close to the outrageousness of her "Producers" coups of toe-tapping grannies with walkers or showgirls with wiener headdresses in "Springtime for Hitler.

Comparison is unfair but inevitable. The now almost-unwatchable 1968 film of "The Producers" was not just transferred but completely rethought for the stage, acquiring a superior life of its own.

The 1974 "Young Frankenstein" film holds up as a gem distinguished by brilliant comic characterizations and a loving homage to Universal's 1930s horror classics. But it's been not so much reimagined as regurgitated, its inspired, throwaway gags ballooned into belabored Borscht Belt shtick or inflated production numbers. The show has no connection with its original satirical target, only with the film, so its humor becomes secondhand. It also frequently spills over from cheeky vulgarity into puerile crudeness."



http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117935362.html?categoryid=33&cs=1

Updated On: 11/8/07 at 07:08 PM

[InfiniteTheaterFrenzy]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 7:12pm

"But a show that could have been a blast ends up being just good enough.
While that limitation seems destined to engender little admiration in the theater community, it's unlikely to deter the tourist traffic vital to keep an expensive production like this afloat on Broadway. "

Such a perfectly worded assessment. I strongly agree.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 7:16pm

Yeah, I think he's fairly spot-on in his assessment.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 7:21pm

I think Mixed is the word that will pop up a lot tonight

[miss pennywise]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 7:21pm

Rooney loves the cast, which is pretty much what everyone says. I'm pleased by the compassion he shows Roger Bart.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 7:23pm

I never thought Roger Bart was bad in the show at all, But i did agree with the review saying a lot of the problems for him come from the book itself

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 7:28pm

Here's another unusual one (at least for opening night) -- The Daily Telegraph (UK) is Mixed-to-Negative:

"I laughed quite a lot and in a generally weak season in New York, Young Frankenstein has the great virtues of vitality and massive self-confidence. But it isn't a patch on The Producers.

That earlier show seemed like a loving valentine to Broadway with its story of an ill-matched couple trying to make money by over-financing a dead-cert flop only to find they had an unexpected hit on their hands. The stage version was blessed with a warmth that the film lacked, and it seemed to have found its natural home on the New York stage.

Young Frankenstein, in contrast, is a spoof of old horror flicks, originally filmed in black and white, and almost all its jokes are cinematic. There seems little point in adapting it for the stage..........

.....But you cannot escape the impression that everyone is working desperately hard to animate essentially weak material, and the show fatally lacks that touch of the sublime that made The Producers so special."




http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/11/09/btfrank109.xml

Updated On: 11/8/07 at 07:28 PM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 7:34pm

The AP is Mixed:

""Young Frankenstein" arrives with a lot of baggage, most notably its inevitable comparison to Brooks' 1974 movie version, which, for some, represents comic celluloid nirvana. Buffs will recognize — and recite along with the actors — jokes from the movie. Brooks and Thomas Meehan, who collaborated on the new book, have gone out of their way to add some new ones, not all of which land with precision. But the stage version follows the film pretty closely.

Brooks also wrote the music and lyrics, and his pale pastiche of a score echoes — none too memorably — the works of such seasoned songsmiths as Rodgers and Hammerstein, Kander and Ebb and a bit of Cole Porter thrown in for good measure. With lyrics such as "There is nothing like the brain" (sorry, R&H), the standard of wit descends pretty rapidly.........

....The film — in glorious black and white — lovingly sends up monster movies of yore. The musical's intentions aren't as clear since song and dance get in the way of the parody, diluting the spoofing."




http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/09/arts/NA-A-E-STG-US-Young-Frankenstein.php

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 7:34pm

The Telegraph always seem to review the big shows opening night (im in the UK so always look forward to their reviews)

I knew they wouldn't like it though lol

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 7:35pm

I knew when the show was announced it would not be another love fest with the critics.

Having said that & despite my brother in laws pa of the show, the BWW video looks good. We look forward to seeing it in March.

[miss pennywise]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 7:53pm

Unlike "The Producers," which has a backstage, show-biz story, "Young Frankenstein" doesn't naturally sing.

I think that's very well-put.

[jv92]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 8:04pm

Problem with the Variety review-
How is the 1968 Producers movie "almost-unwatchable?" I thinks it holds up wonderfully and is better than the musical.

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 8:05pm

Another bit of proof critics have no clue sometimes.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 8:07pm

Talkin Broadway is Mixed-to-Negative:

"What's conspicuously missing is the sense that any of this is answering a greater theatrical calling, and that's what most distinguishes this show from its predecessor. Brooks realized that the cynical grit of his earlier show's source film was unsuited to a snappy stage Valentine, and jettisoned it (and a number of other things) in favor of a bigger and brighter Broadwayization on the same general theme. Replicating every bit, no matter how bite-sized or how dependent on the film's innate intimacy, makes Young Frankenstein more dutiful than droll. Worse, it forces everyone onstage to restrain themselves from unleashing their own charismatic uniqueness, when the film leads (including Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, and Cloris Leachman) doing just that made them a group for the record books.

No one is more at sea than Bart, whose entire characterization seems based on Elaine Stritch having a bad hair day. His throat-splitting yells and balcony-licking grimaces dispel more comedy than they create, and are out of place for a character who only grudgingly accepts his mad-scientist birthright. .......

.... None, however, ever ascends to the delirious stratosphere of entertainment the original Producers cast members attained, and none can make Brooks's stage-bound book (written with Thomas Meehan) and score soar to the rafters......The most integrated number (of course from the film) is one Brooks didn't write: Irving Berlin's "Puttin' on the Ritz," which satirizes the show's mock-Pygmalion implications more effectively than anything else.

It does this in spite of Stroman, who either needs to buy a bigger bag of tricks or stop pulling from the one that's propelled her career for almost two decades. Her hard-sell staging and reliance on dances in lines, dances with props, and dances full of stomp and fury yet signifying nothing display their age and inappropriateness when not servicing the show-biz glitz that's her preferred territory..........

.... Making things appear better than they are is the ultimate raison d'etre of Young Frankenstein, which is so intent on being what it isn't that it never realizes its own inherent potential - it has to settle for being moderately amusing and never full-out funny. Its failures, however, are entirely its own: The problem with Young Frankenstein isn't that it's not The Producers. It's that it doesn't produce."

http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/YoungFrankenstein.html

Updated On: 11/8/07 at 08:07 PM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 8:09pm

Gotta love the line "Elaine Stritch having a bad hair day."

[neddyfrank2]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 8:12pm

What is the Blazzing Saddles musical lyrics in the curtain call that Variety mentions?

[uncageg]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 8:13pm

Just an aside, NBC nightly news did an interview with him tonight. The entire interview is on their website. He got a bit testy when approached about the premium seats and the subject of his wife. I just saw the televised version. Have yet to watch the entire thing.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 8:15pm

Its not looking good for this show

[miss pennywise]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 8:15pm

Margo, you're being kind in referring to the Talkin' Broadway review as "mixed."

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 8:16pm

How long before the premium seating price is reduced along with the number offered?

[pab]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 8:18pm

"What is the Blazzing Saddles musical lyrics in the curtain call that Variety mentions?"

"Maybe next year Blazing Saddles!"

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 8:20pm

He will be rethinking this after the reviews are all out.

[iluvcioffiiluvtea]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 8:22pm

I agree with ya there, Mr. Roxy.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 8:25pm

Miss Pennywise, if you read the whole review, Murray says just enough nice things about the cast and design team to justify calling it "Mixed" (though I suppose it might lean towards "Mixed-to-Negative").