Did Critics Sing the Praises of The Wedding Singer?

The new musical comedy The Wedding Singer, based on the movie of the same name, is a love letter to everything '80s. After a tryout in Seattle, the tuner's team has brought their synthesizers and their big dreams to Broadway, where the show opened on April 27 at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. Do New York like this kind of thing?

Here is a sampling of what they had to say:

Rob Kendt in his Broadway.com Review: "As endearingly hard as this new Wedding Singer works to evoke the cheesy excesses of the Reagan years, the creators-book writer/lyricist Chad Beguelin, original screenwriter Tim Herlihy and composer Matthew Sklar—have made their job still harder by booking a nostalgia cruise minus the original soundtrack. Sklar's new songs knowingly cite hair-metal power chords, New Wave keyboard riffs and the herky-jerky beats of early hip-hop… But what's the point of wallowing in the guilty pleasures of a dubious musical era with simulated junk? It's like a vending machine stocked with RC Cola. But if the score never rises above the generic, director John Rando's production does have a breezy, assured snap, and Rob Ashford's choreography shamelessly samples early MTV with crowd-pleasing abandon."

Ben Brantley of The New York Times: "The show has at least a flutter of a hedonist's pulse. And if its formulaic catering to an established public appetite feels cynical, the cast members exude earnestness and good nature. They are a personable enough lot, which is not the same as saying that they have personality. For, as so often happens when good or even not-so-good films turn into stage shows, the first things to be jettisoned are sharp edges and authentically quirky characters."

Clive Barnes of The New York Post: "As far as everyone else is concerned, imagine Jersey Boys being married to Hairspray, and they now want a divorce—it's that kind of musical. Granted, there will be people out there who will like it, thanks particularly to the frenetically engaging Stephen Lynch—that wittily raunchy singer/comedian from Comedy Central who sings about dead kittens-as its frenetically engaging hero. A good one-word description for this show would be 'crude.' Actually, 'obvious' is better… Still, the book, based on the '98 movie script - by the original screenwriter, Tim Herlihy, with the show's lyric writer, Chad Beguelin-isn't all that bad. There's some fun here."

Howard Kissel of The New York Daily News: "For about 10 minutes, you have the feeling it's going to be an evening of fun. Then suddenly the mood quiets down. It never quite reaches that level of excitement again. What could have gone wrong, you wonder. And then you realize, this is a musical version of a mediocre film—how good could it be? To be fair, the stage version, with book by Chad Beguelin and Tim Herlihy, lyrics by Beguelin and music by Matthew Sklar, does eliminate a lot of the stupidest material from the movie like the title character's sleazy brother-in-law. That, however, isn't enough. Beguelin and Herlihy get a lot of mileage out of period jokes, such as when an arrogant stockbroker advises against buying stock in some Seattle coffee shop that's going public. But they can't get beyond the mechanical feeling of the film."

David Rooney of Variety: "Like a knockoff Prada bag picked up on Canal Street, this looks at first glance like the real thing, but closer inspection reveals the imperfections. Not that its synthetic quality proves fatal to The Wedding Singer, by any means. Forced as it is, this is a fizzy confection offering enough easy enjoyment to attract the outer boroughs and the tourist trade… Comedian Stephen Lynch is an appealing recruit for musical theater. Even if he doesn't have Sandler's vulnerability in the role, he handles both singing and acting duties with breezy confidence. As cater-waitress Julia Sullivan, engaged to a philandering Wall Street yuppie but increasingly drawn to wounded Robbie, Laura Benanti is a less satisfying fit… Benanti's vocals have a lovely, relaxed quality. But she's somewhat sober and charm-deficient here."

Michael Kuchwara of The Associated Press: "[The show] is, unfortunately, more relentless than inspired. All the ingredients, particularly a promising score by Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin, seem to be in place. So why doesn't The Wedding Singer deliver a bigger kick, transporting us to that electric if rarified world of musical-theater bliss? For one thing, the musical seems to be over-enamored of its own concept-obsessively referencing the decade in which it is set when time might better be spent fleshing out the people on stage."

Elysa Gardner of USA Today: "[The musical] trades on 1980s nostalgia with a ferocity that would put a VH1 marketing executive to shame… Singer has more heart and a better sense of humor about itself than some of its similarly wacky, winking peers. That self-effacing quality helps rescue its libretto, by Chad Beguelin and Tim Herlihy, from too many references to banal celebrities and bad sitcoms. Singer also has a winning young cast."

Linda Winer of Newsday: "[The show] is a good-natured, harmless, high-energy knockoff of the 1998 Adam Sandler-Drew Barrymore romantic comedy about nuptial rituals of 1985… John Rando, who directed the hilarious boundary-pushing Urinetown, has brought enough of that precision—wrought mad streak to keep the familiar form from duplicating every pop spoof from Bye Bye Birdie to Little Shop of Horrors, from Grease to Hairspray. If a happy-looking cast were all that was needed for a smash, The Wedding Singer could still be partying in 2085. Although Stephen Lynch and Laura Benanti are pretty generic as Robbie Hart, the nice singer for a wedding band, and Julia Sullivan, the nice banquet waitress, everyone cheerfully attacks the material as if 'Where's the beef?' and Orange Julius and Ronald Reagan's jellybeans were absolutely adorable punchlines."