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I remember the day the movie "Newsies" came out.  Because Ann-Margret was in it, my writing partner and I ran over to the east side of Manhattan to see the 12 Noon show on opening day. 

We were the only ones there.

And, because the projectionist had yet to run his test on the actual film, we had to wait a half-hour before they let the only two patrons in.  This was all rather prophetic since the movie bombed at the box office.

Allegedly, it picked up some sort of a cult following when it was released on video.  Myself?  I had not been re-exposed to the story since that fateful Friday when the 12 Noon showing started at 12:30 PM at the Sutton Theater in New York.

So, now Disney looks to recoup, or maybe that's regroup, on "Newsies" one more time.  Anything that even remotely includes some sort of music is now a candidate for a Disney-ified Broadway musical.  Me?  I'm patiently waiting for "Flubber - The Musical."  If Spiderman can fly all over a Broadway theater, so should a vintage Model-T Ford.  In the meantime, we get "Newsies" on Broadway.  And the hype has been astounding.

Warranted?

Yes.

And no.

Yep, the headline on the Len Herald Tribune would read as follows:

"NEWSIES JUST OKAY."

I can tell you that my opinion of the show might be just a bit tarnished by the theater experience itself.  "Newsies" is playing in the Nederlander Theater which might have been built just as Nero stopped fiddling.  It's ironic that a Disney production is currently playing there.  The seating is best equipped to handle the Seven Dwarfs.  If you're over five-foot-six, this is not a place for you to enjoy any kind of show.

Of course, I'm even more conflicted with a still-recovering left knee that was forced to bend at all the places that I can't bend it at the moment.  As a result, the first act felt very, very, very long.  It was my personal Long Day's Journey into Night.  I wound up watching the second act from a standing room only spot in the back of the orchestra.  And, not surprisingly, I enjoyed the second act on stage better as well.  This perch also allowed me to watch the choral conductor and the kid running the sound board. 

Now, "Newsies" is one of those shows that has kicked into the new Broadway marketing ploy. 

"Let's get some screaming teenage girls here and give them a reason to go wild."

So, producers stack their show with good looking young men gyrating like crazy on stage and the teenage screaming mimis are sitting far enough to not be able to tell that 75% of them are gay.  But they don't care.  For them, it's like a studio audience taping of "Saved by the Bell."  The only thing the producers have missed out on is forgetting to stock Oxy-10 cream at the concession stands for some act break touch-ups.

Most of these kids have likely never seen a Broadway show before, so I guess it's a good thing for them to be exposed to something other than their iPhones.  They went absolutely ballistic with each and every dance number, which was really nothing more than standard choreography and the type of gymnastics you used to watch a Hungarian family of acrobats do on "The Ed Sullivan Show."  This stuff would pale in comparison to such dance-heavy shows like "West Side Story" and "A Chorus Line." 

But, for these little Gidgets, this was the best damn thing they ever saw.  They probably think this is the pinnacle of dance musicals.  The girls went nuts with one number where the newsies dance with newspapers underneath their feet.  Uh huh.   Damn clever.  And I thought so the first time I saw this bit done by Gene Kelly in the 1950 MGM musical "Summer Stock."

Oh, don't get me wrong.  "Newsies" is entertaining.  But no more so than the rerun of a particularly good episode of "The Jeffersons."  This is musical comedy theater straight from your local Chinese take-out place.  It tastes good going down, but, an hour later, you wish you had about four more fried pork dumplings.

I'd issue a spoiler alert here as I start to talk about the show itself, but you can easily figure out the major plot turns at dinner before the performance.  This is pretty much the movie synopsis with some energetic dancing thrown in to rattle a thirteen-year-old's hormones.  Eventually, show writer Harvey Feinstein needs to stop watching the chorus boys himself and pen some dialogue.  That's when the night really starts to drag and "Newsies" turns into "snoozies" and you just know that I've been waiting several paragraphs to use that line.

These kids are all newspaper sellers back at the turn of the century when New York City had about ten or twelve daily papers and people actually bought the damn things.  They're screwed over by publisher Joseph Pulitzer who is the enemy of the piece and no prize----another line I've been dying to use since I saw the show.  The newsies go on strike and it gets violent.  Reading the Playbill before the performance, I noted that one kid was named "Crutchie."  So, I immediately knew that he was handicapped, would fall victim to the skirmish, but make a miraculous comeback at the end.  Duh.  None of this was hard to figure out.  Meanwhile, the boys all method act with a lot of "dems" and "does" as if this was the senior class year-end extravaganza at the Huntz Hall School of Acting.

As the lead newsie Jack Kelly, Jeremy Jordan is serviceable and hunky, the latter being the only thing that mattered to the audience which may have been the recent sophomore class at Hohokus High.  Jordan does his solos as if he is a rock star with these little Justin Bieber-like twinges at the end of each song, which is about as Broadway as Branson, Missouri is.  The kiddies behind me went crazy.  I could feel legendary musical comedy star Larry Kert rolling over in his coffin.

There is, of course, some romance for Jack and it's delivered by Kara Lindsay, who is...serviceable.  You know there will be a big kiss and then the girls in the mezzanine will swoon just like the bobbysoxers did in the 40s whenever a Frank Sinatra record came on the radio.  Meanwhile, all of the ingenue's numbers sound like deleted songs from "Beauty and the Beast."  Given that Alan Menken did that music as well as the tunes for "Newsies," there may be more truth than humor in that last line.

In the lamented movie original, Ann-Margret played the saloon hall proprietor.  On Broadway, we get a complete switcheroo and the role is now filled by that heavyset, Black, and sassy character which must be included in every musical comedy produced after 1990.  This politically correct stipulation is ludicrous, given that it is completely implausible that a Black woman, regardless of size, would be a saloon hall owner back in the summer of 1899.

And, of course, given the Disney brand, we also get a wise-cracking seven-year-old moppet in the cast.  You know he's going to whip off smart one-liners with Gary Coleman-like precision.  And, frankly, while the villains were beating up the crippled kid, I was secretly hoping that one of them would take a stick to the little brat we had to endure the other night.  Where is Kevin "Moochie" Corcoran when you really need him?

Once again, since this is Disney, you will get a happy ending that could easily be part of the Main Street parade in Anaheim.  Teddy Roosevelt inexplicably roughrides in to help tie up the plot and I'm happy that the producers didn't overextend historical literary license and have a Barack Obama lookalike  swoop in and save the day for the youngsters.

There's a wild curtain call straight out of Riverdance and, just when you thought the calisthenics were done for the evening, there's more jumping and leaping by the boys on stage as the girls in the balcony vicariously plan their first sexual experiences with the cast member of their choice.  The subsequent standing ovation goes on endlessly but I had already been standing for the whole second act, so the process had become redundant for yours truly.

At the end of the night, I can say that "Newsies" is...wait for the word one last time...serviceable.  You certainly won't have a bad time, unless, of course, you had arthroscopic surgery on March 27 and need more than eleven inches leg room to sit down.  But, if you're a fan of true Broadway musical comedy, you won't have that good a time either.  You will be longing for some entertainment that can truly warrant that standing ovation at its conclusion.

Of course, my knee would likely still be bothering me then as well.

Dinner last night:  Had a big lunch so just some Japanese vegetables and noodles.