Spider-Man the Musical: A Review

Last night I saw Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.

I heard Julie Taymor and Bono are in town to change the ending. After that, they just have to fix the middle and beginning and they’ll have a good show.

It was that bad. And not bad like “not good.” Bad like “women with four extra legs are dangling from the ceiling while dancing to a rip-off of Britney Spears’s Toxic. And the song is about shoes. And the main woman singing is Arachne the eight-legged spider woman from Greek mythology. And she’s stuck in an astral plane. And she needs those shoes they’re singing about to escape the astral plane.”

Oh, by the way, SPOILER ALERTS for the second act. All that was established in the second act.

Well, that’s a bit of a lie. Peter Parker does a book report about Arachne in the first act, but at first we don’t know it’s a book report. At first it’s just an arty telling of the Arachne myth because this is Broadway and you have to be classy. Actually before that, there was a chorus of 4 punk rock/nerd/hipsters who decide to write an internet fan-fiction version of Spider-Man and they start with Arachne.

Make sense?

After that, the first act is pretty much just Spider-Man’s origin story, but with all the important emotional and character parts removed to make room for Bono songs. Uncle Ben’s character is never established. Aunt May comes off like a nag. Uncle Ben’s death is pretty much glossed over and it’s unclear if Peter realized his selfish behavior caused his uncles death. This makes Peter’s decision to become a hero confusing. More confusing still is that he gets the Spider-Man costume from Arachne who up until this point was just a pretentious narrative device.

Then we get scenes of Spider-Man fighting strange Dick-Tracy-esque grotesque muggers with more POWS, BAMS and BANGS than the 60′s Batman show. There are also multiple scenes of 50′s newspaper reporters telling J. Jonah Jameson all the amazing things Spider-Man and the Green Goblin did that couldn’t be depicting within the play’s meager 65 million dollar budget. Also, many times when you expect to see Spider-Man or the Green Goblin, they swing in a giant drawing instead. In one particularly dramatic moment a large drawing of a baby is saved by an even larger drawing of Spider-Man’s head and left arm.

There were also a lot of songs, but they all blended together and it was impossible to figure out what they were about.

The first act ends with Spider-Man killing the Green Goblin and saving Mary Jane. Yep, they got the entire Spider-Man origin story out of the way in one act. Leaving them plenty of time for…

A VILLAIN FASHION SHOW!

That’s right, the second act starts with the chorus realizing they need a new villain, so they have a fashion show with six of them. But the costumes are so bad I thought the chorus was brainstorming villain ideas (Radioactive-Nazi-Bee-Man is one of the better ones), and then throwing them all away because Radioactive-Nazi-Bee-Man is almost as stupid as Metallic-Sword-Lady.

So for the first half of the second act, it seems like the villain is Peter Parker’s life as he has problems balancing being Spider-Man, with going to school, with helping Aunt May, and with dating Mary Jane. Oh yeah, Peter and Mary are dating now. They don’t really establish this. You figure it out when Peter proposes to her and she says “Okay.”

Then half way through the second act, Arachne comes back strong. Now she’s a villain. She needs Spider-Man to break out of the astral plane she’s stuck in, and by the way she’s stuck in an astral plane. To accomplish this, she brings the Green Goblin back to life. She also brings back to life those six villains introduced at the beginning of act two, because apparently they were real and Spider-Man already killed them even though we never saw that happen. She also causes a world wide power outage so that a shoe store in New York City will get looted, so that she can somehow steal those shoes from the looters, so that she can use the doubly stolen shoes to walk out of the astral plane, so that she can get Spider-Man, so that she can be free. Why does she need Spider-Man to escape the astral plane when the stolen shoes seemed to do the trick? I don’t know. But her threatening of Peter Parker and the people he loves leads to the best two lines of dialogue ever written.

Peter Parker: You can’t be with me.

Mary Jane: But Peter, yesterday you asked me to marry you.

I won’t ruin the ending because I didn’t see it. They cut the play short when there were some wire mishaps with Peter Parker’s final triumphant swing.

Things I forgot to mention

• The first song ends with the line “Let’s go get those tacos.”
• The scientists who create the radioactive spider that bites Peter Parker dress like rejects from the 1970′s Battlestar Galactica.
• The spider that bites Peter Parker is the size of a pony.
• When Norman Osborn decides to experiment on himself, he says to his wife “We will be God and Mrs. God.”
• When Norman Osborn realizes his experiment killed his wife and turned him into the Green Goblin he gives a “YAAAARRRRRGGHHHH” that rivals Darth Vader’s “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO” at the end of Revenge of the Sith.
• The Green Goblin plays piano on top of the Chrysler building.
• To depict Spider-Man diving off the Chrysler building, they use an action figure and an upside-down scale model of the building
• There was a Rastafarian bucket drummer during the villain fashion show.
• When Spider-Man fights all the villains for a second time, it’s through a video montage that uses terrible 3d animation.
• I saw the show with Lauren Adams, Mike Scollins and Jason Saenz. We tweeted about it and got picked up by the Gothamist.
• I am really glad I saw Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.

The FTC Won’t Let Me Be

You may have heard that the Fascist Trade Czar, or FTC for short, has decided that blogs must disclose any payment they receive for giving products favorable reviews. This is distressing for a couple of reasons.

First of all, aren’t there more important things to worry about on the internet? Like shutting down CuteOverload.com so I can get some work done.

Or letting me have CuteOverlord.com so I can put up this photo.

But what really annoys me is that these out-of-touch Washington politicians know more about the internet than I do. You can get paid to blog if you review products?!? I want into that game.

Here’s what I’m thinking. The FTC’s new rule won’t stop companies from paying for fake reviews. Instead, it will just force these “reviewers” to find more creative ways to disclose their payments.

So let’s say you send me a book to review and include fifty bucks. I’ll write it a glowing review that includes at least three of the following words: masterful, poignant, arresting, stunning, fascinating, insightful, important, brilliant, unique, gripping, compelling, fantastic, superb, eloquent, touching, dazzling, striking, imaginative, witty, entertaining, delightful, heartwarming, engaging, triumphant, profound, inventive, effective, haunting, amusing, nuanced, smart, original, memorable, tremendous, powerful, charming, or Sedaris-esque.

Then, after my thesaurus-assisted review, I’ll end with this line: But you don’t have to take my word for it, isn’t that right, former president Ulysses S. Grant?

You see by admitting I’ve done something wrong and then underplaying it by jokingly overplaying it, I’ve diffused the situation. I call this the David Letterman approach.

Obviously, the amount you pay me will determine how much I like your product. so consider these other options.

Or,

And also…

That’s my offer. Balls in your court, giant-conglomerate-corporation-with-new-product-you-lack-confidence-in.

Sing Sing

I don’t know if you know this, but Google Maps allows you to write reviews of locations. So I reviewed Sing Sing.

Here’s what I had to say.

Affordable Waterfront Living

Enjoy the hustle and bustle of New York City, but yearn to get closer to nature? Then head on up river to Sing Sing. Located directly on the Hudson River, our complex offer the best of urban life in a natural setting. All units are located in beautiful pre-war buildings and come fully furnished. Also, upon joining you’ll receive daily meals courtesy of our in-house culinary staff as well as free gym membership good for one hour a day. And you can say goodbye to your ugly commute when our job placement department finds you work in a variety of exciting fields all conveniently located within walking distance of your home.

Sure New York City may be the culture capital of the world, but Sing Sing is no slouch either. The arts are alive and well within our community, any member of which can teach you a variety of exciting craft projects made entirely from materials found on site.

We also have free theater events put on by the Rehabilitation Through The Arts (RTA) providing the very best theater our local actors with a history of good behavior can provide.

Also, for those of you concerned about safety, you can sleep easily knowing that we have earned the coveted “Maximum Security” rating from the State of New York for a record 185 years straight.

And best of all? It’s entirely free! No broker’s fee, no monthly rent, no maitnence fees, no utilities, no nothing at all! With leases ranging anywhere from 6 months to life, there’s no escaping this great deal.

Don’t delay. Units are going fast and the wait list is murder.