Spider-Man 2.0 Reviews, Critic Awards, Budget & Social Media "Villainy"- Page 3

[bk]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 8:48pm

I don't know that I'd call the Chicago Tribune positive, nor will it make any difference.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 8:51pm

Have no idea what this publication is but i thought i would post it
Stamford Advocate - Mixed to Positive
http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/entertainment/article/Spider-Man-is-a-freak-show-and-not-half-bad-1424293.php#page-2

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 8:57pm

Faster Times - Mixed
http://thefastertimes.com/newyorktheater/2011/06/13/spider-man-turn-off-the-dark-review/

[IdinaBellFoster]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 8:58pm

I'm thrilled the cast is getting notice notices!

These reviews are actually better then I thought.

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 8:59pm

Chris Jones of The Chicago Tribune somehow mistook its job to be to compare 1.0 to 2.0, which I think is a glaring error. The review's lukewarm substance:

"The score, of course, remains unsatisfying. Especially its ballads. ...Aside from the songs "Rise Above" and "A Freak Like Me" (which starts the second act off with some wit and unity), the melancholy, repetitive, climax-free music mostly feels out of sync with the zippier material...

Taymor tried to turn "Spider-Man" into an art piece in a bubble inside her own head -- a high-end meditation that probed the mythic roots of our cultural heroes...

The original vision is gone now. Almost all Taymor's signature scenes are either cut back or rejiggered as little visual diversions from the story, as distinct from the story itself. There are a couple of exceptions: Her idea for multiple Spider-men still works quite terrifically, and there are fleeting moments of beauty and genuine progressive invention. Still, I don't think "Spidey 2" will win the belated love of Broadway's chattering classes, but then they don't love comics as a rule.

For those who do -- or those for whom flying around to impress a girl and save the world sounds like a Saturday night of all Saturday nights -- Broadway now has an efficient, very expensive, very new comic-book musical with cool effects, some amusements, a brooding hero in Carney, a somewhat shellshocked but spunky heroine in Damiano, and, I predict, a line out the door for a good long while. "

If one more critic comes up with that "tangled web" cliche I am going to visualize them getting a slushie.
This time, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark makes more Spidey-sense

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 9:01pm

nomdeplume you don't need to post the reviews ive already posted lol

[bk]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 9:05pm

If people are going to post stuff like the Stamford thing as a review, then you can just post Matthew Murray's horrendously bad review on Talkin Broadway's All That Chat.

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 9:05pm

I'm pulling quotes, s&dm2. They help for a quick read. Not everyone has time to click and read the whole reviews.

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 9:08pm

We include Murray's reviews, bk, post the link if you like. I'm working on the substantive part. Team effort here.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 9:09pm

I'm joking with you nomdeplume

And BT, give it a rest, i'm not from America so have no idea what half of your publications are (except the big ones) so im just posting what pops up as im waiting for the UK Shrek ones to come out.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 9:13pm

Talkin Broadway - Negative
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/index.html

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 9:18pm

Peter Marks gives the show background but I'd call the review rather negative, other than some praise for Page and Carney:

"...for all its reliance on mechanistic marvels, the show still lacks what used to be worked out for a musical with a pencil and some paper: a persuasive argument for what Spider-Man has to sing about. Fly around the theater as he might (along with several stuntmen in Spidey costumes), the character is emotionally static.

...Although the nature of the Goblin's hyper-violently maniacal fixation on Spider-Man remains a fuzzy plot point, the consolation is that the evening's villainy is now all concentrated in the visage of Page. ...

In any event, Page appears to be having a ball, filling the hall with mad-doctor guffaws. He camps it up as gleefully as Cyril Ritchard once did, playing Captain Hook to Mary Martin's Peter Pan.

... the dynamic between the hero and villain remains underdeveloped. That's no knock on Reeve Carney, whose Peter Parker charmingly oozes adolescent vulnerability, a trait reinforced in his reedy intonations. ... This happens to work for the morose little romance between this Peter and Mary Jane, though you could wish their connection didn't remind you quite so much of what you feel watching kitchen-sink drama.

Bono and the Edge's score doesn't reverberate this time around with any more theatrical joy or wit. ..."
The Washington Post Updated On: 6/14/11 at 09:18 PM

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 9:24pm

okydoke, s&dm2!

onwards

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 9:30pm

Here is the NY Daily News one that vanished earlier - Mixed to Positive
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/2011/06/14/2011-06-14_spiderman_turn_off_the_dark_review.html?r=entertainment

[egghumor]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 9:32pm

Can't guarantee it, but hopefully this one will link readers to the Joe Dziemianowicz review in the New York Daily News...
New York Daily News review

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 9:39pm

Bloomberg = Negative
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-15/bono-s-70-million-spider-man-looks-amazing-peters-out-jeremy-gerard.html

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 9:40pm

Matthew Murray seems claws out negative, pining for Julie's "smarter" vision, which he saw by attending earlier but did not review [I'll be guessing here on inserting the missing punctuation, btw]:

"None of the connecting tissue, however -- things on which musicals typically thrive, like dialogue, songs, and dances -- represents any craftsmanship, because everything has been designed "around" contributions by Taymor that have either been kicked to the curb with her, or denuded to the point of incomprehensibility. ... Peter has a vibrant external emotional life ... but is hollow and inscrutable, far more than he's ever been portrayed in the comics. U2's volume-heavy ballads screech a lot, but don't ever say anything germane about who -- or better yet why-- any of these people are. (The less-experienced actors, particularly Carney and Damiano, have real difficulty overcoming this deficit.)

...If all the producers, McKinley, and Aguirre-Sacasa wanted was an empty spectacle, then they've got it. But it marches -- or perhaps it's better to say "swings" -- arm-in-arm with a cackling indictment of the nondiscriminating theatregoing public that Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark so openly, and so depressingly, represents. "
Talkin' Broadway

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 9:46pm

Thanks, s&dm2 and egghumor, I added that link to my previous quotes from that same NY Daily News review.

I'm going to pull quotes just from the major reviewers. Updated On: 6/14/11 at 09:46 PM

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 9:57pm

Jeremy Gerard weighs in negative:

""Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" opened last night, a $70 million anticlimax to a Broadway season that ended with Sunday night's Tony Awards.
...
The Arachne story ... remains one of Taymor's most striking images: a row of women suspended in yellow silk, swinging back and forth as horizontal strands form a golden tapestry.

But the cloth now looks wrinkled and tired, as does much of a cast that has been giving its all for so long. The songs still stop the show in its tracks because they're pop songs, not theater songs that get inside the characters while advancing the plot.

...Michael Mulheren still nearly steals the show as J. Jonah Jameson, the newspaper editor convinced that Spidey is a thief. After three times sitting through this empty spectacle, I'm inclined to agree."
Bloomberg: Bono's New $70 Million 'Spider-Man' Dazzles, Peters Out Updated On: 6/14/11 at 09:57 PM

[#1Elphie]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 10:08pm

New York Times is negative: http://theater.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/theater/reviews/spider-man-turn-off-the-dark-opens-after-changes-review.html

"There is something to be said for those dangerous flying objects — excuse me, I mean actors — that keep whizzing around the Foxwoods Theater, where the mega-expensive musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” has entered the latest chapter of its fraught and anxious existence. After all, if you’re worried that somebody might fall on top of you from a great height, the odds are that you won’t nod off.

Those adrenaline-raising acrobatics are a necessary part of the lumpy package that is “Spider-Man,” which had its long-delayed official opening on Tuesday night, after 180-some preview performances. First seen and deplored by critics several months ago — when impatient journalists (including me) broke the media embargo for reviews as the show’s opening date kept sliding into a misty future — this singing comic book is no longer the ungodly, indecipherable mess it was in February. It’s just a bore."

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 10:12pm

Rolling Stone is mixed - They seem upset it's not a disaster
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/spider-man-turn-off-the-dark-reboot-loses-its-train-wreck-mystique-20110614

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 10:15pm

then you can just post Matthew Murray's horrendously bad review on Talkin Broadway's All That Chat.

bk, could you post it, please? I wouldn't dream of risking my hard drive by visiting Ann Miner's site, but since you still troll it, would you be a dear? TIA

[egghumor]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 10:22pm

Although many major reviews are still to come, what I see happening here somewhat is that while some praise/acknowledge improvements with the book, now the weakness of the score (at least as performed within the context of the show) is gaining more attention because the mess that apparently was 1.0 (I didn't see) eclipsed/camouflaged the problems with the score. If the bottom line becomes that the score is not-so-hot, then that could be ultimately as lethal as the reviews for 1.0.

Same goes for Reeve Carney. I seem to recall that many of the critics covering the first version saw another actor in the role of Peter Parker, or again, failed to focus on Reeve Carney due to the larger problems with the production.

This time out it seems that many critics are barely mentioning Carney again. Those of us who love music recognize his gifts as a rock singer, but theater critics are expecting an actor here -- a leading man, and in that way, he doesn't seem to register and therefore Patrick Page is getting the reviews.

and on another note, am I the only one that think he looks more like Mary Jane's younger brother instead of her "man"???

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 10:24pm

Terry Teachout gives a negative but very well written review, love his pining for the poetry of the stage:

"If beauty were really only skin deep, then "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" would be the perfect musical. Every cent of the $70 million budget is visible. ... The show's sheer visual dynamism is staggering—but except for one great performance, it has little else to offer.
...
...the musical that opened last night is completely different from the ambitious production envisioned by Ms. Taymor, who sought to transform the familiar comic-book plot into a modern-day Greek-style myth. The new version, by contrast, is a white-bread commodity musical that is transparently based (albeit without acknowledgement) on Sam Raimi's 2002 "Spider-Man" film. Everything that happens in "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" is thus both utterly familiar and utterly predictable...

...Poetry, not special effects, is the engine that drives lyric theater, and "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" is as unpoetic as you can get. Mr. Aguirre-Sacasa's book is flabby and witless. The score, by U2's Bono and The Edge, sounds like a double album of B-sides...As for Mr. Carney and Ms. Damiano, they're pretty, bland and devoid of charisma. Mr. Carney is also a mushmouth who renders the lyrics of his songs all but unintelligible instead of projecting them clearly, thereby making the score even less dramatically potent.

...Mr. Page is a classical actor of high distinction... Mr. Page has a voice like a cathedral organ and enough charisma to blast Mr. Carney off the stage ... and you can tell that he's having a grand old time playing a supervillain. He even gets to sing a demented parody of "Manhattan" that comes close to stopping the show. (It also has the only hummable tune that you'll hear all night long.)

In addition to Mr. Page, "Spider-Man" contains one thrill-inducing scene, the climactic aerial battle between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin...
...
And there you have it: $70 million and nearly nine years of effort, all squandered on a damp squib. ... it's neither good enough to get you excited nor bad enough to make you mad, and that will in all likelihood be its epitaph: Never in the history of Broadway has so much been spent to so little effect. "
Wall Street Journal: Spidey's Green Glimmer of Hope

[DCS]

Posted: 6/14/11 at 10:27pm

Scott Brown's review is hysterical and sadly very accurate based on what I saw last week.
Scott Brown in NY Magazine