13: O Musical

I do not accept this as a movie adaptation of 13 The Musical. I really love the stage production because it's super funny and has so many great songs. This movie was not funny at all. In some weird effort to make the movie more family friendly than the stage production, the writers of the movie changed a lot of the funny lyrics and lines which provides no jokes and no laughs. The show is called 13, it was originally written to be PG-13, not PG.

Another complaint I have is how the movie changed a lot of the songs and cut all of the really good ones. They changed lyrics and added verses. Like babes, WE DID NOT have to add a rap verse to Opportunity, it's already good on its own. They shortened my favorite song Getting Ready from 4 minutes to 1 minute. And in that 1 minute, they cut all of the amazing harmonies and overlapping parts. Not only did they cut verses, they cut ENTIRE SONGS. To list a few: Becoming A Man, Hey Kendra, Get Me What I Need, WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A FRIEND <3, All Hail The Brain, Terminal Illness, Any Minute, It Can't Be True, and IF THATS WHAT IT IS! I love all of these songs dearly, so please go listen to them instead of watching this movie.

Even worse than cutting these songs, replacing them with the worst songs I've ever heard. The one between Brett and Kendra was right out of the movie Trolls and the duet between Evan and his mom had me almost falling asleep from not caring.

They also changed the music production to try to have a more modern sound, but it just sounded like a cringey video of 8 year olds on youtube trying to sing some olivia rodrigo song. The acoustic guitar and piano of the original music created a coming of age feel, and now there is just too much reverb for me to take the music seriously.

Another thing, they added the mom/dad as actual characters?? And with the most boring storylines ever?? One of the cool things about the stage production is that it's all kids, no adults, so I thought that was weird. But the grandma slayed so I'm not mad about that.

I had been looking forward to this movie since it was announced, and I was so disappointed. I was about to turn it off but then Bad Bad News started playing. That song is the one reason why I gave this movie 2 stars. It was amazing, it did the original justice, and I loved it so much.

And there is your very opinionated review from a theatre loser who loves this show (the staged production) so much.

I have not seen the Broadway musical from 2008 that 13: The Musical (2022) is based on, so I do not know if it is better than the movie version. Because I thought 13: The Musical (2022) was ok.

The acting was not that bad, like Eli Golden playing the main character Evan and the other characters were good. The characters were likable enough so you can get behind them, but they make decisions that made no sense.

The songs were fine even though I do not think they are worth listening to repeatedly, but they are fine for what they are. The dance numbers have good dance choreography, and the actors are good in them.

I would have liked the musical numbers to be a bit more spaced out, because they would have a song play right after another song ended. There are moments I thought could have last longer or moments that should have ended but kept going.

Other than those issues, 13: The Musical (2022) was a standard enjoyable enough musical to watch for a 1 hour and 31 minutes. You do not have to rush to Netflix to see this.

This was an absolute dumpster fire of a movie. Pacing was terrible, acting was minimalistic, songs were average.

Furthermore, they took away the point of the original musical which was that teenage kids aren't the most PG beings out there.

This film had one redeemble five minute scene and it was the football boys absolutely rocking and slaying the song "Bad Bad News."

...but I didn't like that they took out half the songs.

The one good thing they did change though is that the popular kids weren't absolute jerks to Archie though. Growing up, disabled kids were completely off limits to even the worst bullies.

Literally just writing this because someone said Eli was obviously much older than the character he's playing. Evan is 13 and Eli is currently 15, they filmed a year ago so no he's not drastically older, he was 14 years old at the time.

Anyways about the movie, it was cute. It was very netflix-esque however which i didn't love aka over the top cheesy and reminiscent of a disney channel original movie. Sad that a lot of the songs were cut from the show as well. But it's not a bad movie and worth watching if you like musicals as well as Jason Robert Brown's music.