Excerpts from the VARIETY review:
"...One quality this particular story of a havoc-wreaking latter-day Lolita does not flaunt...is sincerity. Composer Douglas J. Cohen and book collaborator Robert Jess Roth evidently thought otherwise. Which is why their chamber-musical version premiering at the Magic ends up conceptually so...the opposite of good...
...Cohen and Roth's adaptation only makes the faux anti-p.c.-dom of Roos' original seem ersatz, while their attempts to shoehorn real caring, sharing, healing and love into a cartoonish lurid scenario get more deadening and false as the brisk evening careens on.
Softening the film's witty viciousness, providing no memorable tunes in a score that sounds like clutter-inclined William Finn without his distinctive neurotic sensibility, this "Sex" strands itself in ways beyond the rescue of cast or director...In fact, their contributions barely register...
Act Two opener "Dead Ex-Lover" briefly indicates the amusingly crass direction this musical as a whole ought to have taken...
It's hard to tell if Brad Haak's arrangements for an invisible live combo of four exacerbate the facelessness of Cohen's music or only respect it...
Where Christina Ricci's sullenly sensuous, odd, amoral Dedee gave the film's arch narrator some charismatic credibility, (Kerry) Butler comes off as an ordinary suburban mall brat, complete with "Ewww" response to every foreign situation...It's not the thesp's fault that she comes off as nothing more dangerous than a Britney wannabe, complete with pop pipes.
The most distinctive singer here, (Karen) Ziemba somehow misses entirely the comic potential in a spinster role made memorably eccentric by Lisa Kudrow onscreen. Other cast members are not flattered by the material."
Updated On: 10/12/04 at 09:43 PM
