This is far from Sondheim's best musical. His lyrics hadn't really settled into themselves yet, and musically here he suffers from Cole Porter Syndrome, where each of his songs has exactly 1 tune that is repeated 15,000 times, with cleverly-rhymed verses for each one... but it just goes on far too long without any substance. The visual choices for the songs were also very unpleasant - rapid montage sequences that are just very distracting.
The story itself occasionally goes overboard on the slapstick, but I would still infinitely rather watch something like this than any of the period comedies written today which feature pop culture jokes that will be outdated in 2 years. It's not perfect, by any means, but I mostly enjoyed it. Zero Mostel was occasionally over-the-top but always entertaining. 3.5 stars.
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