| Variety wasn't the only nasty review ... | |
| Last Edit: WaymanWong 02:15 am EST 12/18/17 | |
| Posted by: WaymanWong 02:11 am EST 12/18/17 | |
| In reply to: Well, that was pretty nasty... - garyd 01:11 am EST 12/18/17 | |
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| Kelly Lawler's pan in USA Today features the headline: 'A Christmas Story' shoots its own eye out. And Lawler gave it 1-and-a-half stars out of 4: ''Although the cast is quite appealing and the show well staged (with hardly a hiccup or blooper), it couldn't liven up the flat material. A three-hour runtime made it a slog, and the musical was overstuffed with songs, some added from the 2009 Broadway musical adapted from it (by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul). Jokes were too far apart and never seemed to land. The added songs were too sugary sweet for the irreverent story, and as a whole package, it felt tonally dissonant and a little dull. ... Child actors were sweet and talented but overused, bordering on grating.'' Jeremy Gerard at Deadline.com: ''The revised book by Jonathan Tolins and Robert Cary drained whatever momentum and slyness wasn’t already leached out by that 180-minute slog. ... There’s no plot to speak of: Kid wants gun, kid gets gun. The meat is in the atmospherics, and in removing the fun, along with any suggestion of perspective, 'A Christmas Story' is a bust. Dad is an obscenity-spewing blowhard who gets off on the female-leg lamp he won in a crossword contest. His transition to loving father in the last seconds of the show was tough to swallow. A beloved scene in which a boy ends up with his tongue frozen to a lamp-post is as unappealing as this description of it. Where’s Harvey Fierstein when you need him? Although the master designer William Ivey Long is credited with the costumes, they appeared to be off-the-rack from Old Navy, the show’s main sponsor.'' Hank Stuever in the Washington Post: Packed too densely with needless smarm and excess songs, “A Christmas Story Live” stretched itself to three precisely executed but tedious hours Sunday night — including gobs of commercials, one of which was a live song-and-dance commercial for 20th Century Fox’s new musical film “The Greatest Showman,” which reeked instantly of box-office desperation and enforced synergy. Other commercials (Old Navy, in particular) were so full of song-and-dance nonsense that it made the experience of watching “A Christmas Story Live” seem that much longer. I like musicals ... [but] 'A Christmas Story Live' had a too-gooey center and a phony sense of seasonal exuberance.'' |
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| Link | Washington Post: Fox's overblown 'Christmas Story Live' (complete review) |
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| Previous: | re: Well, that was pretty nasty... - ryhog 08:58 pm EST 12/18/17 |
| Next: | re: A CHRISTMAS STORY LIVE! - Delvino 09:01 pm EST 12/17/17 |
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