Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 8:00 PM by Gene

The bad reviews are carrier-pigeoning overseas, and we don't know where to start with this one. Oh, we'll start in four good places:

The principal offenders, surprisingly, are the two leads, Broderick's whiny, weak-voiced nebbish being as flat as Lane's libidinous showman is puffed-up. Their patter feels strained and mechanical; little wonder given the number of times they've had to reprise their roles....

Most of the actors are still playing to Row S in the Upper Circle, and we sit frozen before a wild-eyed display of mugging and gurning....

[T]here's something else wrong here, and you know it as soon as the first number ends: deafening silence. Without an audience to laugh, applaud and jolly them along, the songs just die in the pauses that follow.

Of course, this assumes that you'd want to clap in the first place. Brooks's reputation as an avatar of bad taste is no doubt secure, and if broad-strokes satire were the gold standard of comic excellence, then The Producers would be the funniest show on the planet. But this is plainly not the case, and indeed much of it requires an effort of will to endure - not because it offends taste, but because it neglects comedy. He is certainly no songwriter; many of the numbers sound like advertising jingles before the joke-writers got to them....

Yet what really dismays is just how dated the thing is....[D]oes the roar of mirth that greets the line "Darling, quick, back in the closet!" suggest to you an author's incomparable wit, or an audience's low expectations?

It suggests to me KERNGERSHWIN HAMMERSTEIN'S millions!