Last night, we took in Jersey Boys, now playing at The Palazzo. It (rather too literally) tells the story of Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons, making whistle stops for more songs than you can shake a pasta fork at. (Stupidly, I left my program at home this morning, leaving me short a few specifics.)

Maybe the narration-driven format would work as a Martin Scorcese movie, in the vein of Goodfellas or Casino. But, in the theater, the constant breaking of the "fourth wall" doesn't work for me. There's not quite enough book to make it a play and too many of the songs are foreshortened to call it a musical, leaving Jersey Boys neither fish nor fowl.

It makes one appreciate how well-crafted the script for the original "jukebox musical," Mamma Mia! was. Catherine Johnson's book for that seems like Uncle Vanya next to Jersey Boys, where the songs do not arise from the drama except in a chronological sense. Here, the dramaturgy is so skeletal that it forces the cast (playing a plethora of roles) into compensatory, sub-Saturday Night Live overacting. Jersey Boys co-author Marshall Brickman was Woody Allen's writing partner on two of Allen's best films (Annie Hall and Manhattan), meaning that some of the dialogue has a welcome zing. But it's insufficient recompense for a storyline that's thin and thuddingly predictable.

Des McAnuff's direction is, at best, efficient -- certainly nothing special until the grand finale. But the cast performs with verve, especially Jeremy Kushnier as Tommy DeVito and Rick Faugno, busting some nifty moves, as Valli himself. (The part of Valli is double-cast, undoubtedly because of the cruelly demanding vocal lines.) But I'm unsure what to take away from it, save that old-neighborhood loyalty can be carried to insane lengths.

The lobby for the Palazzo theater is beautiful, very nearly the equal of Mandalay Bay's, and considerably more moderne in style. Unfortunately, the largesse stops at the theater doors themselves, as the showroom is a utilitarian, charmless, black box. If any corners were cut in Palazzo's construction, this was probably one of them.

At least, Sheldon Adelson deserves kudos for deciding to present Jersey Boys at something close to full length (and he could have probably gotten away with a completely unabridged version). There are enough corpses of truncated Broadway shows littering the Strip that the notion audiences will only sit still for a 90-minute condensation can be said to be definitively disproven. Besides, it's like you're apologizing for the show you're presenting, offering 'Broadway for people who hate Broadway.'

The large, Monday-night audience at The Palazzo betrayed nary a sign of fidgetiness over the course of 130 minutes. It was a mighty appreciative crowd (I've never seen so many heads swaying in time to the music), downright vociferous at the end. Jersey Boys isn't the best show on the Strip, but it gives enough entertainment for the money to qualify for a spot in the top echelon.

Mamma Mia! update. The movie version is now just a whisker shy of $175 million globally, meaning that it's probably already in profit on a negative cost of $52 million. Nikki Finke reports: "With $17.8M [last weekend], down just 36% from its opener, it had one of the best second week (non-expansion) holds for the summer after Memorial Day weekend. Its new [U.S.] cume is now $62.7M."

The box office isn't out there. How to explain the el stinko opening weekend for The X-Files? Too many years (10) since the last movie? Too much erosion of the fan base because the series ran at least two seasons too many? Excessive secrecy concerning the plot? Was it a mistake to make a stand-alone story rather than a continuation of one the series' several mythologies? No chupacabras?

Theories, anyone? I got nothin'.

(I'm tempted to weigh in on the extremely thought-provoking and disturbing Dark Knight. But I'm so disgusted by the mob mentality currently abroad on the Internet that I'm withholding any further praise as a probably meaningless -- and undoubtedly futile -- form of protest.)