'Bullets Over Broadway' is mildly entertaining but not a blockbuster
5 / 10
In an ideal universe, the new musical 'Bullets Over Broadway,' based on the 1994 Woody Allen film, would shut down for a few months so that a talented songwriter - perhaps David Yazbek ('Dirty Rotten Scoundrels' or the young team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul ('A Christmas Story') - could pen an original score for it. To its credit, 'Bullets Over Broadway' is mildly entertaining...Although the show contains flashy design elements, amusing one-liners and generally decent performances, the decision to use jazz standards from the 1920s and 1930s instead of an original, well-integrated score proves to be absolutely fatal. By pigeonholing these familiar tunes into the existing plot, they arrive randomly and have almost nothing to do with the characters or plot...Zach Braff works too hard at portraying the stressed-out playwright. His singing voice is pretty thin as well. On the other hand, Marin Mazzie is ideally cast as the grandly theatrical Sinclair, and Vincent Pastore of 'The Sopranos' is effortlessly effective as Valenti.
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