Perhaps there's a worse librettist in the history of musicals than Stephen Schwartz but I don't know one. What the hell does the lyric "morning glow/fill the earth/come and shine/for all you're worth/we'll be present/at the birth/of old faith looking new..." mean? He begins with a vague hopeful image but then the sentence keeps going and going, desperately trying to find it's point; the next twelve words do little to deepen things.This is what annoys people about musicals. You can get away with perky, poorly written sentiment tossed away as dialogue (I've just named every drama that won an Oscar in the last 70 years) but as songs, the schlock is transparent. It's called padding; it appears most often on college exams and in poor creative efforts from the 60s and 70s. It was all Fosse could do to undermine this amorphous treacle with his more acid take on things. Schwartz could make a decent melody but his lyrics...ugh. Give him enough rope and he'll hang himself.Pippin is absolutely trite, and in it's current form it barely resembles Fosse's work.

I thought the movie was hysterical. I thought William Katt was amazing as Pippin... he has a great voice. and Ben Verene? yes. amazing. I agree though- the orgy scene- oh my goodness. way too much. but seeing as they're a Broadway company I guess they're able to do that. Two of our area high schools are planning on doing this show in the next year and I cannot imagine how they are going to be able do get it approved by the school board! its a good laugh. I suggest it to anyone over the age of 13 who isn't too squeamish. I didn't know anything about Theo's duck dying. that's sad. And the bed scene is so funny... I don't see how the production could be done without it! good luck pulling that off. all in all I think it was a challenging production that was done in a creative and classy way.

I LOVE THIS MUSICAL (and this version in particular). I wish it would come back to Broadway and have Ben Vereen as the Leading Player again. Even though he is older, he would still be amazing. William Katt was great, Martha Raye was brilliant, and Benjamin Rayson was top notch as well.To the reviewer who said the ending is lacking: They did that on purpose. It is supposed to be anticlimactic. If you paid any attention to the rest of the show you would have realized how brilliant the ending is. They even say at the end that it is a 'musical comedy.' The ending is the funniest joke in the whole show.10/10

Those people lucky enough to see this show in it's original Broadway run saw a brilliant cast performing a brilliant show with an equally brilliant director. The original cast, Ben Vereen, Irene Ryan (of Beverly Hillbillies fame) Leland Palmer, Jill Clayburgh, John Rubinstein, and others easily outshine William Katt (of Greatest American Hero fame) Martha Raye (of denture fame) and the rest. Still, it's a very good production, and nice to see that a Broadway show can, in fact, be filmed and appreciated without paying $100 to see it! The choreography is splendid. Katt's voice isn't horrible, in fact, he sings the difficult Stephen Schwartz music with apparent ease (not to same effect that John Rubinstein had, mind you) All in all, it's a good production, but more on par with what one would expect from a regional theater or really good community theater.