Tarzan Opinions

I thought it failed on every conceivable level. IF you want to read all of my comments, just search for the review I posted when it was in previews. It's one of the worst shows I have ever seen, second only to HOT FEET.

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Yeah.

I thought Hot Feet was good, though. I don't know. I like the stuff everyone hates

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No, it's not because it's Disney.

It's because it's an uninspired piece of garbage.

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Double-ditto. It's cute, but not good. There is a difference. I like Phil Collins's work, but come ON. "Who better than me?" is the worst song in there. Phil keeps saying he wrote a bunch of songs for Terk. Why couldn't he have chosen some other one? Parts are nice, and sweet, but parts are childish. I fouind myself LAUGHING at it's horribleness occasionally. I can never love everything about a show. There has to be some part on some level that I don't like.
Edit: did anyone see them on breakfast with the arts? It was cute.

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Updated On: 10/8/06 at 03:19 PM

What turned me off were the lyrics that reallly made no sense and didn't rhyme at all. They didn't even TRY to rhyme. The excuse can't be "they were trying to be purple prose" because they weren't.
The music bugged the crap out of me. Even the songs I felt were great in the film were justed ruined by the arrangements. "Son of Man" sounded like a song about the second coming of Christ at a Born Again church in Georgia thanks to the arrangement.
Doug Besterman certainly didn't put much effort into the orchestrations either.
The book was lame. So far, with the exception of Mary Poppins, every Disney book has been lame, so that wasn't much of a surprise.
The cast tried. They tried, but they were wrong. Strickland sounded like Cher. Honestly, he did. There's no other music artist to compare him to. Jenn Gambatesse (I'm not going to bother looking up her last name) really needs to work on her English Accent because it ruined her performance. Even Shuler Hensley was bellow par. He played the most brilliant Jud Fry ever. How did he sink to this low? The material? Probably, but he didn't even seem to be interested in his role.
Bob Crowley's staging was off. Just confusing dreck. His tacky costumes for the flowers were attrocious and his concept of making Tarzan and the apes look like stoned druggies didn't work either. His sets weren't impressive either. The lighting design sort of saved the show. The opening was impressive. But it went downhill from there.

i agree with the posts about it being a children's show
i enjoyed it knowing its not Sondheim or something, but just a children's show
it was fun, i mean, the actors and actresses were great, the sets were beautiful, the only weak part was the music
all in all, i say go see it if you haven't, decide for yourself

I agree about "Who Better than Me." It seemed like the only thing Terk sang over and over and over...

I took my whole family to see this show - my wife and child. My son was incredibly excited about seeing Tarzan and it was his first Broadway musical. After about 30 minutes my son was asleep. I wanted to fall asleep as well.

Reasons why I didn't like it:

- the set was terrible, it was no more than ropes on a wall
- the music was awful and dragged on for too long
- the show was unproffesional, even for Disney -- I noticed a lot of the same things that Jess noticed - the crew was visible throughout much of the show
- it was boring
- it wasn't cute enough for parents to sit through it comfortably with their children (who were most likely asleep)

My wife loved it. I'm not sure why, but she did.

I suppose that if you go in with extremely low expectations, you can enjoy it.

The first 2 minutes of the show were stunning, I suppose. I thought "Wow, this might be good!"

But no.

I fled that theatre before the show even ended.

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After reading everyones reviews on here, I went into the show with very low expectations. The only reason I went was to pretty much please my partner. We stood in line for the student rush tickets, got our bad seats and were on our way. I agree with most of you that the first two minutes were great and then the ropes came out. Some parts were very slow and others went by too fast. I agree that some of the songs were out of place. But, I did enjoy myself. I went in to be entertained, and that is exactly what happened. Would I see it again? Maybe. Some of the music was catchy, IMO.

It's garbage. I cannot wait to see regional productions of this show. At the very least, a new set and different director might make it palatable.

visually Tarzan was amazing for a lot of it but the book was just ridiculous. i mean, some of the stuff that would've flown in a cartoon on stage just had me laughing.

i also was highly disappointed with the song selection. these voices could've done something really intelligent and i kept asking myself "oh that's it?" when the songs would end. no rhymes. no plot-drive.

and i didn't really care about anyone in the story, no matter how much i tried. i just kept wishing it would close so that i could see some of this cast in something else better for them.