It's improved with age...

Rating: 8/10 (2 September 2007)

The movie has proved more durable than anyone would have thought. It took substantial critical hits for being a Califoria-ized, Olivia-Newton-John-ized adaptation of a beloved, long-running New York show. At least, we mused at the time, they changed the story so they wouldn't have to make Ms Newton-John affect any sort of American accent: certainly not a New York one.
And yet it seems to stand up well on its own. The New Yorker observed at the time that nobody involved with this movie was alive during the era it was supposed to depict, but they clearly had a fine time with the music. Yes, the scenes were clearly from sunny 1970's California, but this didn't bother the kids who saw this in 1978, and enough time has passed that it shouldn't bother us who remember that it was supposed to be in Brooklyn, in the '50's.
Have fun, kids.