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The musical version of Billy Elliot came to Denver. I unfortunately lucked into a $15 ticket. 2.5 hours of my life that I will never get back. It was the worst play that I have ever seen. No originality; totally predictable; absolutely moronic dialogue; zero-dimensional, completely stereotypical characters; wooden "acting" (because the actors weren't given anything to work with); cheezy music; and cheap attempts at sentimentality. Ignore the incredibly talented kid that played the lead role, and what was left was an effort that couldn't even compete with a high school production. I was highly tempted to leave at the intermission, but I guess that I couldn't believe anything could possibly be that bad and I was expecting the second act to be better.

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I'm sorry it was such a waste of time and money, YouOverThere, but your topic title made me laugh and laugh.

It seems that in order for a play to receive lots of awards, it has to follow The Formula, with a perfectly predictable plot in which the audience knows EVERYTHING that's going to happen after the first 5 minutes, characters with no depth or complexity, and simplistic, unchallenging dialogue.

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Thanks, Mickey, for being willing to speak up and disagree. :) I'm sorry you had such a bad experience, YouOverThere, but thanks to you also for writing in to tell us about it.

I was not the biggest fan of the Billy Elliot movie, but it had some good things in it. My experience with most, not all, cinema-to-stage translations is that the good things in the film tend to get messed up or lost entirely because they can't be reproduced live in a theater and the adaptation can rarely provide anything as successful in their place. I would think this would be true of Billy Elliot, since the urban milieu plays an important role in the film, at least as I recall it.

Is there anyone else who saw both versions and can comment?

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