Bad musicals on Broadway: It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it.
I was excited to see the Broadway musical version of 9 to 5, having loved the movie when I saw it at 
age 12 or so. But I should have known that I was once again being suckered into paying for a creatively empty rehashing of a beloved brand—9 to 5 is nothing but a three-dimensional definition of the word "franchise," more business than entertainment. It can't even be called escapist since at Broadway prices you're not exactly inclined to simply walk out at intermission.
The advance praise for 9 to 5 was real and real encouraging, but I feel that comes from two camps: There are certain people who like familiar, feel-good crap no matter what, and who never dislike anything they see unless it's something they report as being confusing or depressing. They are the folks who try to make you feel like an ogre if you don't find something funny ("Just laugh at it!") or entertaining ("Loosen up!") or worth your valuable time on the planet ("Take it on its own terms!"). Then there are the crazy theater people, who used to have high, almost snobbish, taste, but who over time seem to have embraced commercial and successful works as being preferable to anything too challenging. Anything with a brain is pretentious, anything without is good old-fashioned fun. If only there were more works that were both fun and smart, two things 9 to 5 is not.
