YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN Reviews — Page 7

Jeffrey Lyons of Chammel 4 gave it a rave last night.

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Lyons loves Wildhorn & liked Dracula.

I do to but I just put this in to enliven the conversation. Well, off to the salt mines now.

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"Don't you think critics compared CAROUSEL to OKLAHOMA?
It's a whole different level, but still it always happens."

Please don't put Mel Brooks anywhere near the same universe that Rogers and Hammerstein were/are in.

"And by the way, congratulations Mel."

Yes, Congrats Mel, as far as Broadway's concerned, you're a one hit wonder....and you were only a hit with Lane and Broderick around! Hats off!

"Heres a news flash maybe the crew are working on Young Frank, so go ahead and wish this show to fail...Sad."

If you say so....

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Hmm, in Seattle the ending line was "We'll make the son of Frankenstein, the sequel's coming soon." Do they still sing that?

Nope, now it's "maybe next year blazing saddles?"

It's only been mentioned as the "obvious" choice because Mel Brooks wrote that it might be done in the lyrics of the finale of YF.

But Thomas Meehan has also mentioned it before. Perhaps it was in jest, knowing what that lyric was going to be, but it *has* been mentioned.

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It will not last a week.
It's got to close in January.

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It sounds like Brooks is suffering from the same infliction Michael Bennett had in 1979. Everybody expected another "A Chorus Line," and it didn't happen; it never could have happened. Much like "A Chorus Line" when it opened on Broadway, "The Producers" changed the face of musicals in 2001. As much as I love Mel Brooks and his movies, he obviously will be a one-hit wonder on Broadway.

A few more.....

The Hartford Courant is A Rave:

""The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein" has moved into the Hilton Theatre, and the cavernous house on 42nd Street now has the monster hit it has been hoping for, after the recent duds "Hot Feet" and "The Pirate Queen."

With lightning flashes, thunder crashes, fog creeps and electrical impulses zigzagging, Frankenstein's Gothic noir came to life at the opening Thursday night. With this show, Brooks has outdone even his wildly popular "The Producers".....

......As the title says, this is Mel Brooks' show, and he doesn't disappoint. The book he reworked with co-writer Thomas Meehan plays tighter and the songs show more variety than their efforts on "The Producers." While there is nothing to rival "Springtime for Hitler," director-choreographer Susan Stroman turns the chestnut, "Puttin' on the Ritz" into an occasion for choreographic hilarity, beginning with Hensley's increasingly assured hollering and hoofing with the smoother and more musical Bart, then bringing on Foster, Fitzgerald, Marlin and a heavy-hoofed male chorus to a full-scale extravaganza.

Stroman and the designers have also worked wonders in shadowing "Young Frankenstein" into a '30s movie, with special credit to lighting director Peter Kaczorowski's expressionistic lighting......Brooks' "Young Frankenstein" looks like a surefire smash."


http://www.courant.com/entertainment/stage/hc-youngfrankrev.artnov09,0,6647249.story


The Daily News is Mixed:

"Watching a great musical comedy unfold is like falling in love at first sight. You're swept off your feet and taken on a wild, passionate ride.

In that sense, "The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein," which opened last night at the Hilton Theatre, is like a mere flirtation, not a full-blown romance.

Make no mistake: The show is big and entertaining. But it never matches the delirious thrills of "The Producers," whose creative team regrouped to make this monster musical based on Brooks' 1974 horror-film spoof.

The book, by Brooks and Thomas Meehan, is filled with all the sight gags and double entendres you could want. It stays close to the movie, without really improving it. A few fresh bits add unexpected laughs.

Many of Brooks' songs disappoint, though. They lack the snap and wit he's shown before and do nothing to move the story along."

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/culture/2007/11/09/2007-11-09_young_frankenstein_doesnt_measure_up_to_-2.html


TimeOutNY gives it Two Stars (out of 6):

"This bloated, robotic, astonishingly unfunny behemoth has been cobbled together from spare parts: Brooks and Gene Wilder’s 1974 comedy classic, plus tired metashowbiz winks, lame new gags and joke tunes, and millions of dollars’ worth of spectacle. Add some fake electricity (courtesy of director-choreographer Susan Stroman), and you have a monster that can barely walk, much less dance its way into our hearts. In other words: It’s not alive! Not alive!"

http://www.timeout.com/newyork/article/theater/24123/young-frankenstein


Reuters/Hollywood Reporter is Mostly Positive:

""Young Frankenstein" is a highly entertaining musical-comedy spectacular featuring endless doses of Brooks' classic vaudeville-style humor, terrific performances from an ensemble who have more than a little to live up to and typically expert staging by Susan Stroman. If the show doesn't live up to the level of its predecessor -- nor, for that matter, to the comedic brilliance of its film inspiration -- it still registers as a hilarious crowd-pleaser."

http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN0928877720071109


The Washington Post is Mixed:

"It's Mel Brooks, for goodness' sake, so of course you laugh. And sometimes you even laugh hard, especially when a patented zany like Andrea Martin, in the guise here of steed-scaring Frau Bl¿cher ("NEE-II-GG--HH!"), is clutching a candelabra and warning that the castle stairs are "trrrrrrrrrreacherous."

And yet Brooks's eagerly awaited musical version of "Young Frankenstein," which opened last night at the Hilton Theatre, is such a teeter-tottering patchwork of slipshod gags, recycled dance routines and tinny tunes that even some of the better material ends up feeling a bit shrill and hollow......

....Idolaters of the Brooks mystique might find the evening sufficiently silly. Many others, though, will be scratching their heads, wondering how the jokes could have come to be spread so thin. So if what matters to you is bang for your entertainment buck, don't be surprised if the musical-comedy ballistics of "Young Frankenstein" seem designed less for a cannon than for a BB gun."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/08/AR2007110802201.html

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YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN was NOT just compared to an extremely superior show, DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS.

Carry on.

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Crap...and to think I have tickets

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The news services are beginning to pop up with their assessments of the reviews:

CONTACT MUSIC
THE PRODUCERS - BROADWAY CRITICS SLAM MUSICAL FRANKENSTEIN

Critics are puttin' on the razz for Mel Brooks' attempt to recreate his 1974 comedy Young Frankenstein as a Broadway musical. "The show takes many of the elements that made The Producers such a delight and then saps them of their joy by overselling them," Ben Brantley wrote in the New York Times. Out of town critics who converged on Broadway for the opening were even harsher. In the Chicago Tribune, Chris Jones called it "a colossal -- and, boy, is this show a monster -- disappointment." Peter Marks in the Washington Post described the show as "a teeter-tottering patchwork of slipshod gags, recycled dance routines and tinny tunes." Several critics note that the show opened with terrific buzz and such high expectations that few doubted it would sell out -- even with orchestra seats going for $450 at the box office and for thousands of dollars through scalpers. But as Charles McNulty in the Los Angeles Times observed: "We enter wanting to bust a gut, so no wonder we're a little let down when we leave with only a nostalgic grin." And Louise Kennedy concluded in the Boston Globe that the show "has millions of dollars' worth of pyrotechnics and other special effects with which to light up the stage, and it deploys them with abandon. Unfortunately, though, that doesn't mean that lightning strikes twice."


09/11/2007

http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/broadway%20critics%20slam%20musical%20frankenstein_1049536

Time Magazine wasn't amused:

Young Frankenstein: Monster Mashed

Friday, Nov. 09, 2007 By RICHARD ZOGLIN
Young Frankenstein

Well, the sparks surely fly in Young Frankenstein's oversized '30s-horror-film stage laboratory. But the show, which opened Thursday night at Broadway's Hilton Theatre, is missing much of the electricity that made The Producers such a monster hit.

What went wrong? A few theories.

Start with the source material. Young Frankenstein, Brooks's update of Mary Shelley's horror tale, in which the monster-maker's grandson returns to Transylvania and gets pulled back into the family business, probably has more laughs, and more fondly remembered bits, than any film in the Brooks canon. And Brooks (working again with his Producers writing collaborator Tom Meehan) has faithfully reproduced most of them on stage: Igor and his wandering hump; the steely Frau Blucher, whose very name incites the horses; the monster's visit to the cabin of a kindly blind man who turns into a bumbling firebug.

The difference is that The Producers had a solid, even ingenious, comic storyline — about a Broadway producer who sets out to create a bomb show so he can run off with all the investors' money. Young Frankenstein is, by contrast, mainly a series of goofs on old horror-movie clichés — gags that don't resonate as well on stage, and that lack the comic propulsion that keeps The Producers moving along. That puts a lot more burden on the usual Brooksian jokes about big knockers and small penises — which, as a result, seem more desperate this time around. The Producers was comedy; Young Frankenstein is shtick.

Next, the songs. In The Producers, perhaps the greatest example of beginner's luck in Broadway songwriting history, Brooks's simplistic tunemaking managed to stick in your head ("I wan-na be a pro-du-cer") in a way that richer and more ambitious Broadway scores don't. The numbers in Young Frankenstein seem more generic, off-the-rack items: a tongue-in-cheek buddy duet for the doctor and Igor, "Together Again (for the First Time)"; a Dietrich send-up for Frau Blucher, "He Vas My Boyfriend"; a predictable parody of '30s dance crazes, "Transylvania Mania."

Director-choreographer Susan Stroman, meanwhile, seems to have used up most of her best ideas in The Producers. There's nothing in Young Frankenstein that comes close to, say, the chorus of old ladies doing time steps with their walkers, not to mention the "Springtime for Hitler" extravaganza. The big "Puttin' on the Ritz" number, with the monster (Shuler Hensley) stepping out in top hat and wails, comes the closest. But give Irving Berlin a lot of the credit — with a small nod to Astaire's "Bojangles in Harlem" number from Swingtime.

Then there's the cast. I saw The Producers three times, with three different sets of stars, and it became abundantly clear how much Nathan Lane, the original Max Bialystock, brought to the show, milking every line for laughs that even Brooks may not have known were there. This time, Brooks makes do with an array of competent Broadway vets. Roger Bart (the gay assistant in The Producers) is likable, but only that, as Dr. Frankenstein. Sutton Foster, one of Broadway's song-and-dance wonders, seems to be slumming as the Swedish bombshell Inga, a part any one of a dozen actresses could have played. The dizzy Megan Mullally (of Will and Grace) seems wrong as the doctor's uptight fiancé. Andrea Martin, that SCTV pro, is probably best in show with her funny, full-throated turn as Frau Blucher. Still, Young Frankenstein's one advantage over The Producers is that none of them is irreplaceable.

I may be too harsh. If The Producers had never existed, Young Frankenstein would be a reasonably entertaining addition to Broadway's fall season — and it may yet be a big hit. But we have a right to higher standards. Mel Brooks is no longer the inspired amateur. Now he's a Broadway monster, repeating himself.

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1682320,00.html

John Simon LIKED it?