Amelie NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (778)
See it if If you like Broadway shows
Don't see it if If you don't like Broadway shows
See it if You love Pippa Soo. Are familiar with the movie
Don't see it if You haven't seen the movie or are unfamiliar with the storyline.
See it if The sets and performances are fine. Would appeal to people who like Paris and whimsy.
Don't see it if It doesn't quite hold together. The score is not that impressive, and demonstrates the difficulty of translating a foreign film to B'way.
See it if You love Phillipa soo more than you love your money or time or a storyline. Her voice is amazing
Don't see it if You don’t care if it has a storyline or makes sense
See it if you enjoy whimsical stories with fun staging.
Don't see it if you are looking for something with a deep plot and score. This is a fun show, nothing more nothing less.
See it if Loved the story of the shy girl growing into the wonderful l Ms. Soo. The atmosphere was amazing and the melodies were so catchy.
Don't see it if You don't like musicals in general. My husband didn't like it too much, it was too girly for him
See it if This is a charming delightful celebration of the goodness of people performed in an entertaining manner. The cast were so talented
Don't see it if If You are a grumpy sceptic!!!
See it if Astonishing. Beautiful. Powerful. Amelie was one of the most beautiful and stunning pieces of art I have ever witnessed.
Don't see it if The plot can be a bit confusing if you don't know the story!
Critic Reviews (64)
"It is pleasant to look at, easy to listen to and oddly recessive. It neither offends nor enthralls...'Amélie' the musical seems to have no nationality, or sensibility, to call its own...All credit to this show’s creative team, overseen by the director Pam MacKinnon, for giving coherent life to a tale that exists as much in Amélie’s imagination as in anywhere else...That the show’s creators are aware of the potential dangers of cloying cuteness probably accounts for its seeming so subdued."
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"During this promising but never delivering musical fantasy, you can easily (and frequently) dream up ways the creative team might have better turned the 2001 film into a stage event that didn’t cloy and harden into static quirk halfway through...Book writer Lucas and songwriters Messé and Tysen are at pains to articulate a singable emotional center of the source while staying true to its careening, cinematic narrative. The two duties ultimately cancel each other out."
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"Amélie the character and thus 'Amélie' the show remain alluringly, maddeningly remote...When a narrative is held together by tone instead of the working out of interpersonal conflict...there’s no bright line between what’s pertinent and what isn’t...As a result, MacKinnon’s staging, which has little choice but to underline the aesthetic, develops a bad case of nonspecific where-the-heck-is-this?, often leaving the audience more amused than informed."
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"It is clear how little concern there is here for the wry Truffaut-esque wit of the 2001 film...The musical is so full of stage business that the main impression is of tumult, which is more evocative of Times Square than Paris...There are so many misjudgments of taste and style in the first two-thirds of the show that I was becoming immensely sympathetic to Amélie’s desire to avoid excessive human contact...Most songs were bland and mildly tuneful."
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"I had the luxury of seeing 'Amélie' twice, and I admit to finding its charms more readily revealed on second viewing, The score, for one thing, is more sophisticated than a single hearing suggests, and perhaps more cunning...The authors, along with MacKinnon, avoid gratuitous winking, trusting both 'Amélie' and Amélie to work their charms. You’ll buy it, or you won’t. By the end, I was a bit in love, even if – as so often is the case with the real thing – it wasn’t at first sight."
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"The Broadway musical adaptation is simply pleasant—at least when it isn't plodding...Virtually all signs of Frenchness are gone in director MacKinnon’s staging...Soo is lovely and her crystalline singing has every bit as much pull as Tautou’s big brown peepers. If only Messé and Tysen had given Soo something outstanding to sing...'Times are hard for dreamers,' the heroine observes. The same goes for audiences dreaming that this show would transcend, or even match, the movie."
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"It’s almost mandatory to have seen the movie if you hope to follow the erratic events of Craig Lucas’s twee book...Soo's lovely voice isn’t enough to animate the character...As listlessly played by Adam Chanler-Berat, Nino is a case study in vapidity...Messe’s music is emphatically insipid, with zero flavor of Paris, and the songs keep landing in awkward moments...In the end, it’s just wearying, looking for some logic in all this relentless whimsy."
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"This grating stage musical takes the slenderest of romances and drowns it in cartoonish quirks in place of genuine warmth or feeling...Moments that don't cry out to be musicalized get slathered in song, while others where music might have helped go unsung...With more swinging doors than most farces, this is a show that manages to be simultaneously frenetic and inert...The talented cast fights a losing battle to give these annoyingly artificial characters life."
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