ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway: Critic Reviews

It's all conveyed with an evenhanded, often affectionate tone. Even [Rosie] O'Donnell comes off sympathetically.

It is filled with neurotic people in greasepaint, some charming, most amusing, and by the time you've spent an hour and a half with them, you're more than invested in their lives and cares.

The film's slick and entertaining, an obvious must-see for musical hounds. It holds water for laypeople, though, because the insights into a communal creative process are so sharp.

Movie buffs who don't know their way around the Great White Way will be struck by the endless parallels to Hollywood in the Broadway documentary ShowBusiness.

What stands out, not surprisingly, is the work and passion that goes into the shows. But seeing all this from the inside creates an extraordinary level of empathy for those involved.

Dori Berinstein's cameras catch gallant theater people doing what they've done since Sophocles was a pup: rehearsing, revising, worrying, learning, stretching, struggling to bump things up from good to wonderful and constantly, fervently hoping.

In the end, I wish Berenstein had devoted her filmmaking to two musicals instead of four, thus affording even more screen time to each show's creative process (the audition process, the choreography, early rehearsals and such).

Much of this strikingly human, rapidly paced and laudably well-rounded film is fascinating.

Dori Berinstein's fine documentary chronicles the production of four high-profile musicals during the 2003-'04 New York theater season.

Short on insight. You'll have to look elsewhere than this love letter to the Great White Way to explain why Wicked and Avenue Q became huge hits, and why Caroline, or Change joined Taboo as a costly flop.

Sheds much-needed light on a fascinating show-business institution.

The film is a love letter to theater and the people who make it.

Anyone who thinks show biz is glamorous and easy should watch this film.

It whets your appetite for the stage; it certainly made me want to watch every one of these plays.

For those who believe there's no business like show business, this documentary will be a singular sensation.

This sounds like the sort of thing that could bore to tears anyone not enamored of the musical theater, but in fact it's a compelling, often amusing look backstage.

Thanks to Berinstein's celebratory but lucid documentary, now have a better sense of what it takes to make it on Broadway.

It's a rosy and warty look at what makes the big shows happen, and what makes them tick. I hope you'll see it, even if you're not 'into' musical theatre -- it's really well done.

Berinstein's film captures all the hopes, thrills and heartache of an endeavor in which every night is a high-wire act.

ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway is a tasty bonbon for theater buffs that has many fascinating backstage details.

For the Broadway babies out there, ShowBusiness will make you want to schedule a trip to the Great White Way.

It's incredibly prescient of Berinstein to know where to be and get in there...It's a rosy and warty look at what makes the big shows happen, and what makes them tick. I hope you'll see it, even if you're not "into" musical theatre.

By keeping the theme squarely on the process and the toll it takes on the players, Berinstein gives viewers a captivating look behind the scenes.

Bright lights, big drama. A delectable trip down Broadway.