"The Wedding Singer" Reviews

[RadioTV2]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 6:02pm

The Hollywood Reporter is early, and NOT pretty:

"This highly unnecessary musicalization, produced by the same folks who brought you "Hairspray," throws in as many jokey references to that much-maligned decade as it can, and your appreciation of it will depend on your tolerance for endless jokes about such emblems of the era as A Flock of Seagulls and "Flashdance."

"What made the film work as well as it did was its two leads' off-kilter comic charm. Sadly, neither of their stage counterparts comes close to providing an approximation. Lynch is a likable and engaging performer, but he lacks Sandler's aggressive edge and comes off mainly as bland. Benanti, whose mature beauty makes her seem too old for her role (she's only 26, however), lacks the daffy air of eccentricity that would make her attraction to her co-star more credible."

"Director John Rando ("Urinetown") tries mightily to provide a wild comic exuberance to the proceedings, but the staging seems mostly haphazard."

"The show did seem to please the audience, and there might be enough Jersey tourists who will be delighted at its gentle sending up of their home state. But "The Wedding Singer" seems unlikely to provide New Line Cinema with another screen-to-stage-to-screen transformation a la its hugely successful "Hairspray.""

Well, after its 8 Drama Desk nods today I can't imagine all the reviews will be this bad, but who knows?
"Wedding Singer" musical may delight tourists

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 6:11pm

Well the only actul critic on that Drama Desk nominating committee is Matthew Murray who writes for talkinbroadway.com which isn't exactly the Times.

[WaltSummersPI]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 6:13pm

Matthew Murray doesn't even like theatre.

[Calvin]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 6:14pm

It's gonna be a long night for this show. Can't say I disagree with the opening shot.

[Tiny-Toon]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 6:25pm

Several of the supporting performers do offer amusing turns, most notably Cahoon, as the gay band member who has modeled himself after Boy George and Spanger, who provides some real sexual sparks with her erotic striptease in the number "Let Me Come Home."

Frank Scheck, get your facts right! Amy Spanger does NOT sing "Let Me Come Home", Felicia Finley does!

Just shows how much this review really is worth..

Updated On: 4/27/06 at 06:25 PM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 6:33pm

Speaking of Matthew Murray, Talkin Broadway is Negative (surprise, surprise):

"News flash: If you can't laugh at the 1980s, you're a stick in the mud!

An odd message for a musical, no? Yet there's no other discernible point to The Wedding Singer, the flashy, facile, and futile new show at the Al Hirschfeld. It spends two and a half hours mocking the trends, fads, and foibles of a decade, in hopes that will be enough to anchor a brightly colored, surface-level musical comedy.

It's not.

What's been forgotten by librettists Chad Beguelin and Tim Herlihy - like everyone involved in this robotically entertaining enterprise, from director John Rando on down - is that cheeky references are no substitute for wit. The dialogue encompasses such venerable '80s fixtures as The Clapper, New Coke, Mr. Belvedere, and Joanie Loves Chachi, which all do evoke the period in a general, harmless way. And there's no lack of attention to detail in the blinding pastels and California-influenced colors of the costumes (Gregory Gale); the mile-high-meets-low-flow-showerhead hair (David Brian Brown); and the choreography (Rob Ashford), which slavishly recreates all the era's defining dance moves.
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Do other things work? Sure. Scott Pask's scenery is attractive and inventive, as is Brian MacDevitt's lighting. And Rando's direction, for once, brings out the best in the material.

But there's just not a lot of "best" here; "good enough" is the predominant offering; this is exemplified by the two visual gags that bookend the intermission. The second act opens with an entr'acte recreation of the trailblazing videogame Pong. It's very funny, yes, to see lights recreate those ubiquitous paddles and that ever-bouncing ball, but Pong was 1970s news; by 1985, even Pac Man (1980) was approaching passé.

Spanger herself is responsible for the other: She ends the first act in a nightclub's go-go box, striking an evocative pose on a chair, and yanking a chain that thoroughly douses her with water, a la Flashdance. Why, you might ask? Why not, you can almost hear Rando and the authors respond. They might have spared Spanger the drenching: She, as with so much else in The Wedding Singer, was, like, already all wet."



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

Updated On: 4/27/06 at 06:33 PM

[Tiny-Toon]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 6:48pm

This is on most visible display during her energetic longing song, "Someday," the show's musical highlight. But throughout, despite few chances to pop out her gorgeous high notes, she's doing the best work of her career.

Looks like it was a good idea after all to cut "Right on Time"..

[jimnysf]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 6:52pm

"The show did seem to please the audience..." And that, is really all that matters, isn't it?

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 6:52pm

I don't think getting 1 fact wrong makes a review invalid. They probably were half awake by the time that song came up.

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 6:55pm

But is it the job of the theatre critic to echo the audiences response, or give their personal opinion?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 6:55pm

Broadway.com is Mixed-to-Negative:

"A guitar pick, a sweat towel, a bouquet, a garter, a light dusting of glitter or petals—these are the airborne goodies a few lucky theatergoers might walk away with from The Wedding Singer, the eager-to-be-loved new Broadway musical version of the sneakily charming 1998 Adam Sandler film vehicle. The rest of us are likely to walk away from this pleasant but pointless tuner with an embarrassing, almost unimaginable thought: that what we really wanted to hear was more Dead Or Alive, Spandau Ballet and Kajagoogoo.

As endearingly hard as this new Wedding Singer works to evoke the cheesy excesses of the Reagan years, the creators—book writer/lyricist Chad Beguelin, original screenwriter Tim Herlihy and composer Matthew Sklar—have made their job still harder by booking a nostalgia cruise minus the original soundtrack. Sklar's new songs knowingly cite hair-metal power chords, New Wave keyboard riffs and the herky-jerky beats of early hip-hop; and there's no mistaking repeated nods to the magisterial synth fanfare of Van Halen's "Jump." But what's the point of wallowing in the guilty pleasures of a dubious musical era with simulated junk? It's like a vending machine stocked with RC Cola.

But if the score never rises above the generic, director John Rando's production does have a breezy, assured snap, and Rob Ashford's choreography shamelessly samples early MTV with crowd-pleasing abandon. The laughs not provided by breakdancing or headbanging come from the show's relentless design riffs: Scott Pask's Nagel-meets-Jersey Shore sets, Gregory Gale's judiciously tacky costumes and, perhaps most important for the decade that brought us Flock of Seagulls and Dee Snider, David Brian Brown's wigs.
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By the finale, The Wedding Singer has pulled out every stop in the '80s organ, imagining a Vegas wedding chapel full of celebrity look-alikes, including Ronnie and Nancy. And while I must salute a show with the cornball chutzpah to have Reagan quip to Tina Turner, "Miss Turner, knock down this putz," in good conscience I can only recommend this show to diehard fans of shoulder-pads, leg warmers and the video for "Thriller."



http://www.broadway.com/gen/Buzz_Story.aspx?ci=528386

Updated On: 4/27/06 at 06:55 PM

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 7:00pm

When did Benanti get the ugly wig?

[GYPSY1527]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 7:02pm

I saw it on Tuesday and thought she had the ugliest wig EVER! I liked her better with the brown haired wig...more distinuishable from Drew Barrymore.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 7:03pm

That wig is even worse than in Seattle. She sort of looks like Laurie Metcalf on ROSEANNE.

[bwayondabrain]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 7:04pm

wow, those are some pretty negative reviews...
and if the attendance wasnt that great in the FIRST place!

maybe it will at least get a tony nod for sets or something

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 7:05pm

Yeah, her Seattle hair was much better. Maybe they're trying to make her look like Drew.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 7:06pm

maybe they will recycle the sets for a musical of WORKING GIRL at the Muny or something like that.

[GYPSY1527]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 7:06pm

Thats what I think. I remember a discussion on this board a few days or weeks ago when people were saying that they wanted a blond Julia. Its not that unlikely that producers and poeple inolved with the show came to a similar conclusion.

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 7:07pm

I doubt they'll be able to hold on too long with these bad reviews. They've been in the mid-70's. I doubt this will help matters.

[sondheimboy2]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 7:08pm

Remember that "All Shook Up" didn't get any nods either. And it had good sets...

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 7:09pm

I didn't think the sets were that impressive. Pretty standard far, nothing inventive or award worthy.

[dancingthrulife04]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 7:14pm

That wig is awful. I wish they'd left her hair the way it was in Seattle. At least then it looked like it could belong to her.

[Al Dente]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 7:14pm

This does not bode well for a run and please don't get the people who nominate for the DD's confused with people and awards that "actually" matter. I think the show needed love letters across the board to survive and it's not going to happen.

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 7:17pm

I'm sure they'll get a couple of Tony performance nods, and maybe a Best Score nom by default.

[Al Dente]

Posted: 4/27/06 at 7:21pm

I'm not convinced. The reviews thus far teeter on harsh. And again, you're not dealing with the likes of Matthew Murray and company doing the arbitrary and ill conceived nominating.