Broadway match-up: "Spider-Man" vs. "The Lion King"

(CBS) NEW YORK -- I saw "Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark" this weekend in its final days before the $65-million musical is reportedly scheduled to be shut down for retooling -- minus director and creative muse Julie Taymor, who was canned after months of postponed opening nights, injured actors and bad critical buzz.

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What comes to mind? Loud, spectacular, unmelodic, soulless and, yes, a lot of fun.

"Spider-Man," as conceived by Taymor and U2 band members Bono and The Edge, is a dazzling concoction of cutting edge stunts, 40-foot video screens, clever costumes and extravagant sets. If you like action movies and Cirque du Soleil aerial work, "Spider-Man" is a perfectly fine night of theater - although steep at $140 for orchestra seats.

Where "Spider-Man" falls down is in the more traditional elements of musical theater. The songs are forgettable and the singing often unintelligible, the dancing mediocre and the plot is a mess. The basic Spidey origin is there, high school weakling bitten by radioactive spider becomes hero. Taymor wraps that story into another of four teens crafting a comic book, and adds another layer of the Greek legend of Arachne, a boastful weaver who was turned by the gods into a spider. When the plot resolves at the end with Arachne's change of heart, there's no rhyme nor reason and it feels like a quick fix.

But back to the stunts. The actors swing out over the audience a half-dozen times. Spider-Man (various stuntmen as we saw at the curtain call) successfully lands on the ledges of the lower and upper balconies. At one point he does a flip in the air to land on the back of the Green Goblin. It's spectacular choreography, although a little unnerving if it's happening above you and you remember those reports of falling actors and stunt miscues.

Speaking of miscues, at Saturday's evening performance the stage manager briefly held the show after announcing a problem with a set flyaway. This was met with good-natured applause from the audience, which also gave the show a standing ovation at the end.

So the general public -- the show is a sellout and ranks in Broadway's weekly top three grossing plays behind "Wicked and "The Lion King" -- is not as hard on the show as those peevish theater critics. "Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark" is hardly "broken beyond all repair," as the New York Times dismissed; nor one of the worst musicals of all time, as sniped the Washington Post.

What is surprising is that it's the product of theater veteran Julie Taymor, who has been one of the most exciting visual artists of our time. Her movies and theatrical works have been striking in their visual flair, and the innovative ways in which her costumes and staging have added depth to the work.

Which brings me to "The Lion King," still running strong on Broadway 14 years, and $4 billion dollars later. When "The Lion King" opened on Broadway in 1997, it was fresh and unlike any show that had come before it. Instead of hiding the actors' faces behind animal masks, Taymor used clever, and yet minimal, costuming to add to the expressiveness of the acting and singing - not distract.

It's been more than 10 years since I saw "The Lion King" and I can still remember how the different animals paraded on stage - a long-limbed giraffe, fluttering white birds, and those lions with their magnificent headdresses and the human faces below.

"The Lion King" was not one of my favorite musicals - it's a kid's story of the most basic kind, young man initially shirks and then assumes responsibility. But "Lion King" is light years ahead of "Spider-Man" in terms of the cohesion of acting, singing, dancing, costumes and sets.

One of the most beautiful moments I've ever experienced in theater occurred during "The Lion King." I can't even remember the setup, but at one point the ushers and the extras came up behind us and used poles to extend puppet birds into the air above the entire audience - orchestra, balconies and upper balconies.

It was so startling - for a moment the air above the audience was filled with fluttering birds. Puppets on poles - it didn't cost $1 million dollars and no stuntmen were injured, but it was truly special how the action leaped up from the stage into the air above us.

Fourteen years later, Taymor is still trying to cross the proscenium arch. She's endured a savage mauling for aiming high and falling short with "Spider-Man." But I hope she bounces back and moves on to better, if not necessarily bigger, things.

Watch "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl's piece on "Spider-man Turning Off The Dark"