That '90s Show

We think there will be enough of the original cast on screen to make watching That ’90s Show worthwhile. But we’re not sure if audiences are going to want to sit through the broad scenes featuring the teens to get to the good stuff.

That ’90s Show is milder than a Milwaukee cheddar, built to be watched while scrolling on your phone, but from the moment Leia takes her father’s place, yelling out “Hello Wisconsin!” in the opening titles, the lure of generations past might just drag you in.

The makers have obviously worked under a laminated sign saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, and who can blame them? The same character traits are all there, if redistributed among the youngsters’ parts.

For older viewers, its format as well as storylines may well conjure nostalgia. For younger ones, I wonder if its sitcom-y rhythms, the way each episode builds around a conflict resolvable in 22 minutes and makes time for an applause-ready cameo, will suit.

But for whatever reason, one never quite emotionally invests in their challenges, as charming as the actors are to watch. Nevertheless, Haverda has an appealing presence, and her castmates (including Andrea Anders as Gwen’s mother, the series’ other adult) have fine comic instincts. ... To anyone interested in a sharper picture of young people in the last years of the last century, let me direct you to Freevee’s lovely “High School.” And “My So-Called Life.”

As an outgrowth of this fad [revivals], the series falls somewhere in the middle of the pack. While there’s a chance we’ll want to hang out in the basement with this gang in the future, we’d rather hang out with Red and Kitty upstairs for now.

It’s a little edgy and occasionally chuckle-inducing and mostly sweet-natured, and it’s just OK and quickly forgettable.

While there’s smoke here, there’s not much heat, as an uninspired next-generation crowd offsets encores by most of the original cast, leaving “That ’90s Show” feeling at best half-baked.

There will certainly be giggles. But there’s no longer any wink necessary between the show and its audience. There are also considerably coarser references to sex and basic biology now, which seem to arrive at moments when a writer has run out of wit. ... Unfortunately, “That ’90s Show” much of the time suffers from a sensibility that suggests Disney Channel tween comedies of the early 2000s, programs that never made much of an effort, perhaps because they had a captive audience.