Everybody’s a critic, as they say, but some people get paid to do it.

And those folks, on occasion, write something that leaves the average person scratching their head. You have to wonder why did they write that.

In The New York Times, Jesse Green’s review of BOOP!, a musical that I raved about when I saw it in Chicago sixteen months ago, left me asking “Why.”

Ironically, his beef with BOOP! is that he doesn’t like “why” it exists. He seems to have some sort of unusual problem with Betty Boop as a character, or person, or merchandising icon or something. I don’t get it. Was he frightened by a Betty Boop cartoon when he was little?

It’s not that he disagrees with my opinion of the show that much. I mean, an honest disagreement of opinion is normal. My problems with his review begin with the fact that he opens it with the rather embarrassiing sub-header, “The It girl with the spit curl looks great for 100, but her Broadway musical, which feels like one big merch grab, is boop-boop-a-don’t.”

I’m not even bothered by the pissy sitcom bitchiness of that “look at me I’m clever” intro as much as I am by the thought that he came up with that before seeing the show, and then tailored his review to match the “boop-boop-a-don’t” part.

I’m lead to this conclusion by this negative review because it includes the following remarks:

“As Betty, the flapper of early talkie cartoons, Jasmine Amy Rogers is immensely likable. She sings fabulously, sports a credible perma-smile, nails all the Boop mannerisms and has a fetching way with a tossed-off line. I can’t imagine anyone making more of the exhausting opportunity, let alone in a Broadway debut.”

“She is ably supported by other young talent in featured roles, luxury-cast veterans doing their damnedest and a hard-working ensemble selling Mitchell’s insistent, imaginative, precision-drilled dances. When his pinwheel kick-lines hop in unison, not one foot among 26 is left on the floor.”

“David Foster’s music, in a jazzy brass-and-reeds Cy Coleman vein, pops nicely; the lyrics, by Susan Birkenhead, are far better crafted than you dare hope these days…I laughed out loud at her show-off rhyme of ‘It girls” and “spit curls.'”

These observations are in a review that bemoans the very fact that this show exists. I mean, if it’s wonderfully-directed with great  choreography, music and lyrics and has a fantastic cast…isn’t that reason enough for it to exist? Is any musical that has an ounce of merchandising potential damned to hell in Mr. Green’s strange little worldview?

I think maybe Mr. Green let his predisposition to look down his nose at a certain type of show keep him from enjoying one of the most fun musicals I’ve ever seen. Eight years ago, Green did not review the exceptionally wonderful SpongeBob Squarepants: The Musical for the Times. I can’t help but wonder if Green hated that also wonderful musical, because he thinks cartoons are beneath him.

His argument that new musicals should not be based on old properties is more than a tad ludicrous. I mean, musicals based on the life of Alexander Hamilton or the works of L. Frank Baum seem to have done pretty well.  We won’t even go into the vast number of musicals that recycle the works of Shakespeare.  You gotta wonder if he would have dropped the once-mighty NY Times critical hammer on those.

Boop! deserved better than this from the Times, who had no problem running a big feature article on the history of the character a few days early so they could take advantage of all the buzz surrounding the show. His review seems like a calculated, but badly-crafted, hit job filled with snobbery and disingenuous claims.

April 11 Update: Since this was written, the same critic lavished praise on the musical Smash, which has been on the receiving end of reviews from other critics that are largely negative, some overwhelmingly so. There are two points here that I think are curious:  First, his criticism of BOOP! being based on a pre-existing property is interestingly not something that seems to bother him about Smash, which is based on the obscure and forgotten TV Show.  Second, his review of Smash allows comments from readers. His review of BOOP! does not.

I haven’t seen Smash, so I can’t compare the two shows, but at the very least, the treatment of them by the Times seems rather inconsistent.