Pretty negative from Newsday. Here are the first few paragraphs.
News that the guys from "Hairspray" and "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" were making a musical based on the movie "Catch Me If You Can" raised a couple of intriguing -- also daunting -- questions. How? And why?
That is, how could songs, dances and a Broadway stage add to the plot-heavy adventures of a real-life teen con man without losing the odd and breezy travelogue style of Steven Spielberg's 2002 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks? This is answered, sort of, by framing the kid's life as flashbacks on his own '60s TV variety show.
OK, then, why? Hard to guess, alas. Director Jack O'Brien, writer Terrence McNally, composer Marc Shaiman and co-lyricist Scott Wittman have made a slick, professional, conscientious and uninspired show that strains to fit Frank Abagnale Jr.'s improbably true tale into a stylized box of sentimentality and ho-hum retro-routines.
Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.