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Critic Reviews
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Galavant is perhaps most watchable thanks to the fact that there isn't anything like it on TV right now, and likely never will be replicated. Beyond that, it's silly but fun--rare enough in this world.
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These guys know what they’re doing. And this time they’re doing it with a welcome edge in rousing, ribald times.
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Fans looking for wit and whimsy can expect a happy ending. [26 Dec 2014/2 Jan 2015, p.115]
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Written by Dan Fogelman, Alan Menken and Glenn Slater, the new musical miniseries on ABC has so many clever bits and witty songs you’ll think someone wrote a sequel to “Spamalot.”
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No part of the equation that makes up Galavant is subtle. It piles on the songs, the choreography, the bawdy humor and the clever writing. That deep dive into the genre is what will help viewers shake off the doubts we had going into it. Galavant is a uniquely enjoyable ride.
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Galavant largely overcomes the challenges that have traditionally bedeviled TV musicals with rambunctious energy, cheeky lyrics and music, and — significantly — a half-hour format, thus condensing the need to create songs into a manageable task.
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The music is effective without being especially memorable. You may not leave your living room humming any of it, but you’ll still be chuckling over some of the jokes in the lyrics, many centered on puns, childish humor and groan-inducing obviousness.
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TV audiences may not have known they needed a small-screen equivalent of Spamalot--and the network may not really know what to do with it--but Galavant turns out to be completely winning in all its cheesy glory.
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Unfortunately, the whole is less than the sum of its comic and musical parts.
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Galavant’s focus on lighthearted quips and banter over character growth or introspection keeps it from packing the punch of its more emotionally driven precursors, but its sincere embrace of musical-theater tropes and unabashed silliness are likely to win the show a loyal fan base nonetheless.
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Galavant is extremely silly--but at least it knows it’s silly.
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Galavant is a musical spoof of knight-in-shining-armor stories that is slight, unoriginal, and uneven, but that can be amusing and diverting nonetheless.
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At times it feels enough that the players seem to be enjoying themselves to enjoy it alongside them.
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Half the jokes are inspired; half the jokes hit the floor.
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Self-indulgent but packed with great cameos and kitschy production numbers, the whole affair could have been a tight 90 minutes. Instead it's flamboyantly self-referential and clocks in at four hours.
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I wish Galavant were a movie. I found the show charming and festive and impressively committed, but in half-hour chunks, there's very little room to build the kind of momentum the series needs.
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This is, without question, the oddest show to arrive on television in quite some time. ... [But] unlike the best musicals and fairy tales, it never once transports you to a land far, far away.
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The show offers an excess of mildly clever yet sincere goofiness. It’s as if someone set out to make a Spamalot for an audience that can’t quite grok Python, would find Into the Woods too morose and maybe missed half the pop-culture references in the Shrek movies.
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Despite some amusing bits and clever songs, it’s only occasionally as much fun as it ought to be.
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The series does try to develop its characters, but Galavant never quite finds a way to ideally pull together its gonzo comedic spirit and musical aspirations.
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Nothing about Galavant is quite as good as it needs to be — or nearly as good as the multiple spoofs it seems to be copying, in part because it never seems to be quite sure about what exactly it's spoofing.
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It's all got the stirrings of something that should be funny, or wants to be funny, except that it's too often not - confoundedly, relentlessly, insistently not. [3 Jan 2015]
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It comes off as way too broad to be witty, and too raunchy to be a comfortable fit for family viewing.
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Just being incredibly good-natured isn’t quite enough to create a show you’d want to watch every week.
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These jokes aren't funny ones. They're old, threadbare ones that Galavant does nothing to build upon. In fact, they might be Galavant in a nutshell: everything seems different, but this is the same old TV slop in a different suit of armor.
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Galavant feels like a slapped-together production that will only confirm the suspicions of heathen TV-watchers who think most musicals consist of flimsy stories padded out with tunes that repeat the plot developments.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 97 out of 127
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Mixed: 11 out of 127
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Negative: 19 out of 127
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Jan 4, 2015
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Jan 7, 2015
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Jan 5, 2015