Hands On A Hard Body

So Michael Marie took me to see Hands on a Hard Body last week.  The tag line for the show should read “the score is awful, but the lyrics are worse!”  Yes my friend, that is the sad truth about this show that is fortified with many talented Broadway performers yet was possibly one of the worst shows Broadway has belched forth since Lysistrata Jones.  But let’s kiki:

This musical is based on the documentary of the same name, which coincidentally, some late night I happened to have seen.  So I knew all about the storyline WAY before I knew it was made into a “ahem” Broadway Musical.  The general story is that of a car dealership that hosts an annual “Hands on a Hard Body Contest”.  Each contestant is the selected through a lottery.  Then each contestant is given a pair of cotton gloves (so as not to mark up the vehicle with hand prints) and then they have to keep one hand on a pick-up truck until there’s only one man left standing.  That’s the storyline. 

Now I have to be honest and say there were some damn good performances and quite a lot of talent on that stage.  But this show was so bad, that even the talented cast couldn’t save it.  Yes, it really was two hours of my life that I’ll never get back.  I will say, that the truck was pretty cool as it moved all around the stage.  And the director did some awesome blocking of this show.  I really thought the director did a great job.  And there really wasn’t so much choreography, so much as musical staging.  Then again, how can one dance while consistently having to have one hand on a truck?  The musical staging was extremely creative and was unique and never repeated.  Yet, this show sucked so bad I could hear the sucking noise continue as we exited the theater.

Should you see this show?  Oh hell to the no.