Word: humorless
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Indeed not. As casting began, Altman knew he needed someone to play a movie star playing a smirky action-adventure hero, somebody else to play a movie star playing a humorless ingenue -- a Bruce Willis type and, say, a Julia Roberts type. He asked Willis and Roberts. "They were the first people we chose. I was going to start going from there -- I never dreamed we'd get both of them." He also got Burt Reynolds, Jack Lemmon, Rod Steiger, Cher and a horde of other six- and seven-figure actors to play themselves for a few hundred dollars apiece...
...escapism is more timeless: this is an all-black show with absolutely no references to white people, pro or con. The nearest it comes to relevance is a rudimentary feminism, at one point disavowing the sexism of some of the vintage numbers. One can get all humorless and huffy about the feathered costume for Ain't Nobody Here but Us Chickens and the rest of the cheery inanity. One can insist that the theater be meaningful and memorable. Or one can, more sensibly, check one's higher consciousness at the door and have a shallow but rollicking time...
...ashamed that their conversation hearts are--well--easy to make (3 T. sugar, 1 t. dye, 1 t. chalk dust. Yield: one conversation heart). They're afraid to let me see that the catchy sayings are not generated by the whimsy of a human mind but by a gigantic, humorless computer, nicknamed "The Lovemaster...
...Their sets have started the same way for the past four-and-a-half decades--two members of the group came onto the stage and explained why the rest of the group could not join them. Traditions can be nice, but this opening bit was so poorly written and humorless that perhaps the Kroks should consider scrapping...
...this play is more accurately a series of vacuous show tunes set back-to-back, with only the sparsest of dialogue separating musical numbers. And while a few of the tunes are catchy ("Razzle-Dazzle" and "Cell Block Tango" are both amusing), most of the dialogue seems flat and humorless. One exchange between Roxie and her lawyer is particularly foolish. When Roxie tells Billy, "You treat me like some dumb common criminal," he replies, "You are some dumb common criminal." Couldn't book writers Ebb and Bob Fosse have done better than this...