[In Superstar the] Christ of faith gives way to the Jesus of history. Rice and Webber have acknowledged modern scholarship's discovery that the New Testament picture of Jesus is colored throughout with propagandistic interpretation more intent on convincing the reader that Jesus is the divine God-man than in giving an historically accurate picture of the flesh-and-blood man of Galilee. (p. 218) Rice and Webber attempt to dramatize the life-style of the historical Jesus in the midst of the life-styles...

With Jesus Christ Superstar, the segment most often pincered for separate analysis is the younger generation—or sliced even thinner for microscopy, and for sensational copy, the counterculture and the Jesus Movements. Yet these ripples in American society are only peripherally related to the popularity of Superstar…. (p. 262) The very first fact that the critic must deal with—rationally, not in righteous indignation—is the tremendous popularity of Jesus Christ Superstar…. ...

[It's] almost impossible to suggest the imaginative impoverishment, the sheer stupefying banality, of … [the] version of the last days of Christ [in the movie Jesus Christ Superstar]…. In another respect, however, I underestimated the work; I had expected the alleged anti-Semitism of the film to be no more than the random fallout of its pandering to the anti-establishment sentiments of its audience, to be, in that sense, unintentional. But though the villainy of the Jews "works,&...

Can Jesus survive "Jesus Christ Superstar"? Sometimes it is "Love Story" in Jerusalem. Other times it is only "The Greening of the Box Office."… But is it a serious work of art? And how does it deal with the Passion of Christ?… In a myriad of details gone wrong, the show bears little resemblance to the New Testament. Yet, what is most important, Jesus' mission got misplaced somewhere from drawing board to Star Chamber.

Guided by a longtime prejudice against Broadway musicals and reinforced by a decade dedicated to fighting bathrobe-and-beard Bible films, I attended a preview screening, fully prepared to attack Superstar with all the snide sophistication I could muster. To my absolute amazement, I found the film to be compelling, moving and visually stunning. It is superb cinema, stimulating theology, and in no way anti-Semitic. Superstar … accomplishes something I have never before seen in a biblical film: it portr...

Can a work so monstrously successful [as Jesus Christ Superstar] be all bad? The answer, sadly, is yes. The Gospel according to Tim, Tom [director Tom O'Horgan] and Andy is a far cry from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The music is banal, the lyrics infantile, the staging monumentally vulgar, the theological conception of the Passion of Christ a travesty. It is its success—and only that—which forces one to give it serious consideration. (p. 1) It is difficult to determine what the intent...

[The movie version of Jesus Christ Superstar is] in many ways odious and in all ways absurd…. [The] entire story is presented without any original point of view, the only slightly significant departure being Christ's virtually provoking and coercing Judas into betraying him so as to fulfill the grand design. But I doubt if, at this late date, that is likely to give rise to a new heresy or serious schism.

Nothing could convince me that any show that has sold two-and-one-half million copies of its album before the opening night is anything like all bad. But I must also confess to experiencing some disappointment [with] "Jesus Christ Superstar."… It all rather resembled one's first sight of the Empire State Building. Not at all uninteresting, but somewhat unsurprising and of minimal artistic value….

Superstar builds to considerable impact and evocativeness, in part because it manages to wear its underlying seriousness lightly. What Rice and Webber have created is a modern-day passion play that may enrage the devout but ought to intrigue and perhaps inspire the agnostic young…. Together they have fashioned a clever, youthful blend of skepticism and romantic questioning….

It is a bit silly for religionists to argue over the theological points in the libretto of "Superstar." Rice has assembled his simple and familiar narrative line from all the Gospels, moving from the feast at Bethany through the entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the agony in Gethsemane, Judas's betrayal, the Crucifixion. His choosing to pivot the "plot" around the question of Jesus' divinity is a natural decision as a child of his time. It is a perspective, eve...

Being wrong is never funny. When I saw "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" in London a couple of years or so ago [see excerpt above], I thought it was pretty good. Modestly good. Not incredible, but viable…. In many ways it is better than "Jesus Christ, Superstar." At least it is not quite so pretentious. But those many ways are not enough. In London it seemed acceptable. In Brooklyn, with, I think, a slightly jazzed-up staging, it seems a loud and pushy bore&#x...

Lyricist Tim Rice has found for ["Jesus Christ Superstar"] a personal, and I think persuasive, tone of voice. The tone of voice is not merely mod or pop or jauntily idiomatic in an opportunistic way. It sheathes an attitude. It speaks, over and over again, of the inadequate, though forgivable, responses ordinary men always do make when confronted by mystery…. [Rice's] are blunt, rude, pointedly unlyrical lyrics, not meant to coat any period with a little literary flavoring but to...

Messrs. Rice and Webber are talented and clever young Englishmen who command smooth lyrical and dramatic gifts…. But primarily the tone the music and words [of Jesus Christ Superstar creates] is one of forced hipness and sentimentality, that of an egregiously over-sweet rock-coated Broadway musical. There are the dramatic declamatory descending modulations when Jesus sings of understanding what power really is about, a steal from Tommy's "How can he be saved / From the eternal grave.&#x...

Just as Handel composed "Messiah" and Bach wrote his "St Matthew Passion," so Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice have produced "Jesus Christ—Superstar." An outrageous statement, some will say. How dare they? But the point is that Handel, Bach, Lloyd Webber, and Rice have all created music which tells the same story in the language of their day….

"Jesus Christ Superstar" is an enormously successful record album, called a "rock opera" in one of pop music's pathetic and pointless efforts to gain respectability by imitating orthodox forms. It is also an awful album, overproduced and overorchestrated in vain compensation for underinspiration and a complete lack of the qualities that make for rock music—vitality, rhythm, state of mind, musicality…. [It] required no imagination to envision as a commercially...

[I came to the film version of "Jesus Christ Superstar"] with virgin eyes and ears both of which were glazed after one hour and forty minutes of almost unmitigated boredom. At the risk of being sacrilegious, I couldn't wait until they nailed Jesus…. [There's] the scene where Jesus is tossing the moneychangers out of the temple which is filled with postcard stands and hookers. In fact, in charging through the temple, Jesus breaks up a lot of mirrors and one can only conclud...

Jesus Christ Superstar [the film] is intellectually as vacuous as the Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber rock opera it so faithfully follows,… and religiously as authentic as Sunday morning services at the White House…. [Almost everything in the film is played] for either laughs, irony or earnestness—not a shot in the film is corrupted by genuine emotion or sentiment. Jesus' character is so poorly drawn that we never understand either the appeal that he generates or the hostility h...

["Jesus Christ Superstar"] is so stunningly effective a theatrical experience that I am still finding it difficult to compose my thoughts about it. It is, in short, a triumph…. ["Jesus Christ Superstar"] considers the seven last days of Christ in contemporary pop terms and, it must be added, with complete reverence.

[The] rock legend of Joseph, fresher and brighter than "Superstar," is an understandable knockout in ["Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat."] It is totally unpretentious and, perhaps by the same token, totally charming. Clive Barnes, "Stage: A New Troupe Performs at Edinburgh Fete," in The New York Times (© 1972 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), September 5, 1972, p. 45.