YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN Reviews- Page 3

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 9:29pm

You would be surprised how many people are going to see the reviews its on the bloody news here in the UK now and they are talking about the "largely negative reviews" lol

Can i just point out that the UK is on the HIGHEST level of flood warnings right now with the thames barrier having to be closed etc and the UK bracing itself for a massive surge to break banks tomorrow and STILL young Frankenstein has made the news here hehehe

[folkyboy]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 9:32pm

who screwed up the horizontal scroll on this thread?

[miss pennywise]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 9:38pm

Songanddance,

Very sorry to hear about the flood situation.

It kinda parallels what's happening with these reviews though, doesn't it?

Back to the point about the length of YF's run...it's true that very few people read reviews. In the Wasington DC area where I live, no one reads reviews nor do they know--or care to know--what's happening in New York. I'm generalizing, of course.

But the rest of my family still lives in NYC and environs and they don't have a clue unless I tell them! And they're theatre lovers, so go figure!

[rosscoe(au)]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 9:39pm

I agree, the reviews mean nothing in this case, when it closes in 4 years having payed back it's investment thats all that Brooks and co will care about.

Do we think "Blazing saddles" will be up next?

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 9:41pm

Thanks, hopefully the flood thing wont be to bad (they are predicting loss of life yikes but hopefully thats a worse case scenario )

I think he needs to leave blazing saddles alone

why doesn't he take his great comedy writing and create something original (i know, scary thought) but it might be better than all this re hash stuff

[miss pennywise]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 9:47pm

Personally, I don't think Mel Brooks has done anything worthwhile since Young Frankenstein, film-wise. That was his Citizen Kane. So to speak.

Even the stage version of The Producers was based on an earlier success. I mean, he's way past his prime, don't you agree?

[johnnyg]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 9:47pm

is Theatermania guy kidding?

"Not the least of her (Stroman's) many bright inventions is an 11 o'clock number she joyfully builds around Irving Berlin's interpolated standard, "Putting on the Ritz," where she shows off the tamed monster (a comically braying Shuler Hensley) and an accompanying chorus in top hat, tails, and platform boots."

has he seen YF the movie? does he think "puttin' on the ritz" was stro's idea? sheesh!

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 9:48pm

well he didn't exactly shine with space balls lol

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 9:49pm

"Do we think "Blazing saddles" will be up next?"

God, I hope not. While I love the movie to death, I can't see it working on stage. Imagine the fart scene around the campfire musicalized. Ewww.....

Not to mention, could live actors on stage in 2010 or whenever it is actually be able to get away with many of those racial and politically incorrect jokes? The N-word is used probably two dozen times at least -- would people today feel comfortable laughing at that the same way they did 30 years ago? I mean I find it hysterical, but I bet not everyone does. And if you cut all the politically incorrect jokes and words out of it, what do you have left? Probably, about 20 minutes of material. Mel and Tom Meehan would have a hell of a lot of rewriting to do if they want to try and adapt that movie to the stage.

Updated On: 11/8/07 at 09:49 PM

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 9:51pm

Yeah margo i agree

Great film but not really a great idea for a musical

[tomemiller]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 9:51pm

On the Young Frankenstein DVD extras, Gene Wilder explains how Mel did want the Puttin' on the Ritz scene in the film. Gene goes on to say how he had to really convince Mel to film it. Go figure?

[pab]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 9:52pm

Maybe he should just do 'Silent Movie' next and give us a break for a while.

Updated On: 11/8/07 at 09:52 PM

[Auggie27]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 9:53pm

The show is likely -- ultimately -- review-proof, but it will cease being a must-have ticket, and probably do AIDA business, and then SCARLETT PIMP. biz. And then? Who knows.

Had it played the Broadhurst or the Imperial, by the way, the film's intimacy might've translated, and made the hoarier exact-transfers charming, sweet homage instead of calculated rip-off. (

But taking a series of close-ups and medium shots we see in on the dvd at home and spreading it across the Radio City-inspired Hilton doesn't make anyone -- even tourists -- cozy up to an ice show scale. (PRODUCERS wouldn't have exactly soared in The Hilton.)

Hey, even CATS benefitted from the relatively intimate environs of the Winter Garden. And considering how much it's maligned for being mere spectacle, remember how ntimate CATS really was, at least in London and NY??

[rosscoe(au)]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 9:55pm

Margo, I must admit that it has been over 20 years since i have seen both Young Frank as well as Blazing Saddles. From what i remember i did not think that Blazing was all that funny. As for turning it into a musical i was not serious.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 9:56pm

Oh, rosscoe, whether you were serious or not, you KNOW that Mel Brooks is seriously thinking about how he could get away with doing it on stage. There's even a joke about that in YF, at the curtain call.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 9:56pm

The Hilton is probably one of the only broadway theatres i have never been in, whats the problem with it? is it really THAT big? and if so why the hell did Hot Feet play there lol

[tomemiller]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 9:57pm

But Mel is serious; when I was in Seattle I had heard that he was in the process of working Blazing Saddles...

[pab]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 9:57pm

USA Today - Mixed

"It's alive — but just barely.

If there's fun to be found in Young Frankenstein (* * ½ out of four), Mel Brooks' latest movie-to-Broadway-musical transformation, it's all the result of the giddy, goodwill-laden charms of the original. What worked on film works, for the most part, on stage. It's when the show gets inventive, expansive and, well, musical that it gets into trouble.

The core problem is not Frankenstein's monster but The Producers' ghost. Once again, as on that record-setting hit, Brooks has written the music and lyrics and teamed with Thomas Meehan for the book, and Susan Stroman has returned as director and choreographer. But Young Frankenstein was a smaller, tighter, more cinematic comedy than The Producers, one in which the characters were mere conduits for gentle jabs at old horror films. Even if the extraneous vaudeville shtick the creators have imposed on it were of Producers quality, and it isn't, Young Frankenstein probably would crumble under the weight."

Mel Brooks' 'Frankenstein' is missing a few parts

Updated On: 11/8/07 at 09:57 PM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 9:59pm

USA Today gives it Two-and-a-half-Stars:

"It's alive — but just barely.

If there's fun to be found in Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks' latest movie-to-Broadway-musical transformation, it's all the result of the giddy, goodwill-laden charms of the original. What worked on film works, for the most part, on stage. It's when the show gets inventive, expansive and, well, musical that it gets into trouble.......

...For some fans, the mere chance to watch those stars re-create the film's high points may be enough, but you can't help feeling that underneath all the bloat is a more modest and likeable musical comedy. Modest shows, however, seldom become the kind of big hits that command big ticket prices, and big is clearly the goal here.

No, Brooks and company didn't create that monster. They just made Young Frankenstein its victim."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/theater/reviews/2007-11-08-young-frankenstein_N.htm

[DrTheatre]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 10:00pm

I just watched the interview....he needs to retire. He is getting old, he just keeps marketing the show. That is fine, but calling it the "BEST SHOW YOU WILL SEE IN YOUR LIFE". Well from the critics and word of mouth; hardly!

[uncageg]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 10:01pm

I saw Hot Feet there. It is a cavernous theater. Even though the Gershwin seats more, it is the first theater I was in in NYC that felt like the Buell here in Denver which seats more than the Gershwin.

Brooks, in the interview said he was glad to get the theater. Brian Williams brought the subject up about the theater size and that there have been no hits there. To which Brooks replied "Yes there were, Ragtime and 42nd Street. 42nd Street was a big hit".

Updated On: 11/8/07 at 10:01 PM

[pab]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 10:01pm

LA Times - Mixed

"The question isn't so much what's wrong as what's not ecstatically right. Let's start with the Busby Berkeley busyness that Stroman keeps distractingly conjuring. These routines titillate, but they're belabored, and in a show that's about 20 minutes too long, they begin to grate.

In the central role of Dr. Frankenstein, Roger Bart, unforgettable though he was as flaming Carmen Ghia in "The Producers," doesn't have the wide-shouldered zaniness to carry this large an undertaking, never mind stifle any latent longings for Wilder. Bart had to miss quite a few preview performances because of a bad back, and it's hard to resist the armchair diagnosis that the load of this overbuilt spectacle has been simply too much for an actor whose distinctive loopiness is more evident in second- or third-banana roles.

The first act is disappointingly leaden. After a humorous opening in which the denizens of Transylvania Heights dance in the streets because Dr. Victor von Frankenstein (1833-1934) has finally kicked the bucket, the comedy nose-dives."
'Young Frankenstein,' a monster of a comparison

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 10:01pm

The LA Times is Mixed:

"The same can be said for this fitfully entertaining show, which tickles its audience into reasonably high spirits yet doesn't quite establish the autonomous existence that "The Producers," that other Brooks screen-to-stage transplant, sensationally pulled off. But then that may be setting the bar too high. Not every musical adaptation can win a record-breaking 12 Tonys and become the hot ticket among the pay-anything expense account crowd.

Collaborating again with Thomas Meehan (who co-wrote the book) and Stroman (who directed as well as choreographed), Brooks is testing whether he's a glamorous Hollywood interloper or an honest-to-goodness Broadway franchise. But a delightfully nutty addition to the tourist-dollar-chasing pack might be more accurate.

Sure, the new musical -- replete with the kind of pastiche novelty songs that Brooks has made his specialty -- has deliciously diverting patches, but too often it leaves us noticeably shy of that laugh-induced state of delirium he has always been better at instigating than sustaining."

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-young9nov09,0,600586.story?coll=la-home-middleright

[miss pennywise]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 10:06pm

He said in an interview that "Listen to Your Heart" (or whatever it's called) was the "most beautiful" song he's ever written. I can't remember the melody at all (!), but I remember watching Sutton Foster perform it and thinking, "Mel Brooks is a shameless self-promoter because NO ONE would think this is a beautiful song...not even the composer!"

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 11/8/07 at 10:07pm

Brian Williams brought the subject up about the theater size and that there have been no hits there. To which Brooks replied "Yes there were, Ragtime and 42nd Street. 42nd Street was a big hit".

Not exactly. RAGTIME and 42ND STREET, while they both had long runs, didn't return their investments.