MOVIES: Show Business: The Road to Broadway (Dori Berinstein, 2007)

Berinstein follows four musicals of the 2003-04 Broadway season from rehearsals to the Tony Awards in this pleasant documentary. They're an eclectic assortment of shows. There's the big-budget Wicked, based on the novel about Oz from the Wicked Witch's point of view; the London import Taboo, a largely autobiographical show written by Boy George and produced by Rosie O'Donnell; the defiantly anti-commercial civil rights story Caroline, or Change; and the "Sesame Street for grownups" puppet musical Avenue Q.

Berinstein gets lucky, capturing some marvelous moments -- composer Jeanine Tesori and lyricist Tony Kushner struggling to get the final number of Caroline right; Boy George sneaking out of the theater for a cigarette on the opening of night of Taboo and meeting two long-time fans, who just happen to be the writers of Avenue Q, which is playing two theaters down the street; the cast of Wicked marveling at their first sight of Idina Menzel in her green makeup -- and some lovely Broadway traditions, such as the travels of the "gypsy robe."

Serving as a Greek chorus of sorts are several of New York's most prominent theater critics, who meet over dinner or cocktails several times during the year to chat about the season for Berinstein. They serve largely as a reminder that even the self-styled experts don't really have any clue about what the public wants; every one of their consensus opinions -- "There's no audience for Avenue Q!;" "Wicked is a mess that's doomed to fail;" (that one eventually replaced in their groupthink by "Wicked is sure to win the Best Musical Tony") -- proves to be wrong.

The critics are particularly interesting when analyzing the failure of Taboo, the biggest flop of the four; in retrospect, they seem to think that they may have been to hard on the show, and that it deserved a better chance than it got. (The lone exception here is Michael Riedel of the New York Post, who seems to have made it his personal mission to destroy Taboo and everyone associated with it.)

The movie's not ultimately terribly insightful, and I don't think it'll hold any real surprises for anyone who follows theater (or any other major form of showbiz, for that matter). But it's a sharply assembled piece of entertainment, and theater buffs will surely enjoy it.