Connie Casserole. Oh, Mary, don’t ask.

so all in all i do enjoy it BUT it has a serious misogyny problem that is pretty glaringly obvious. i could elaborate on this (and in fact had typed it out) but as i said it’s pretty clear and surface-level. the musical does its best to improve on this by making ulla an actual character but because it’s also trying to be a faithful adaptation of what people like about the original, it preserves the actual plot of the movie and thus ulla can’t really drive much of it (outside of convincing leo to run off to rio with her). again, i like that the musical preserves the plot because i like the movie, and i do think this was the best point to give ulla agency in the added love story. however, in order to keep the plot moving, it has to be undone, and this is leo’s idea that ulla just goes along with?

as far as other main adaptational differences go, gay hitler definitely has more staying power than hippie hitler, just because the hippie stereotypes haven’t persisted as much as the gay ones (although one could argue that some of the stereotypes are the same). i found myself thinking of the unfunny (and coincidentally also jewish) movie I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!, which also relies heavily on hippie stereotypes and jokes that don’t age well simply because they’re no longer relevant. (also: eagle-eyed mash viewers will recognize the director of the movie, hy averback, as a frequent mash director!)

i really love leo as a character because his various neuroses are both entertaining and relatable to me personally (i’ve attached my autism and ocd to him for reasons that, again, should be obvious, and naturally the judaism factors in as well). i really love gene wilder’s performance (he is after all the blueprint), and i felt that matthew broderick was just kind of copying what made gene wilder’s portrayal so great. as i put it in my letterboxd review of the 2005 movie, “Matthew Broderick you will never be Gene Wilder. Nathan Lane you can do whatever you want forever.” boy do i love nathan lane. i wish billy and julie from difficult people hadn’t killed him