An awful reunion nobody asked for

The off-Broadway show “Romy and Michele: The Musical” cuts out “High School Reunion” from the title.  

Punchier, I guess.

If only that eraser was put to better use. 

The sorry excuse for a stage adaptation, which opened Tuesday at Stage 42, takes a quirky 90-minute film that was completely reliant on the charm and chemistry of its leads Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow, pumps in almost an hour of formless filler and pulverizes its personality to the point of being practically unrecognizable.

Devolving into commodity slop is a curious move for an underdog cult comedy ostensibly about the drawbacks of pretending to be someone other than yourself.

Yet that’s what this entire exercise in soulless IP exploitation is: A fun movie masquerading as an interminable musical.

In much the same way their BFF characters unconvincingly don power suits, stars Laura Bell Bundy and Kara Lindsay try their best to adapt Sorvino and Kudrow’s kooky California accents and bizarre behavior into a song-and-dance setting. It just doesn’t work.

We gawk at the peculiar pair like they’re long forgotten classmates at our own reunion.

Don’t I know them from somewhere?  

They can’t be our favorite Diet Coke drinkers.

Bundy plays husky-voiced, direct Romy, while Lindsay is bubbly Michele. They’re roommates, soulmates and, in this unappealingly goofy show, practically inanimate.

The actresses are well matched, chemistry-wise, however there’s zero honesty to their performances. And the singing leans screechy. Kudrow and Sorvino, unsurprisingly, prove irreplaceable. You wouldn’t want to watch “Pee-wee: The Musical” without Paul Rubens. The same is true of “Romy and Michele” without the OGs.

Their plot roughly matches the movie — just a lot longer. Two LA best friends embark on a road trip to their high school reunion in Tucson, and en route decide to fool their class by telling a big lie about their careers: They invented Post-Its. 

The first act is mostly a forgettable, sluggish flashback sequence to their years as teenage outcasts and a dramatic prom night filled with unrequited crushes involving goth Heather (Jordan Kai Burnett), nerd Sandy (Michael Thomas Grant) and hunky Billy (Pascal Pastrana). 

There are barely any laughs in the drag-and-drop staging from director Kristin Hanggi, whose work on “Rock of Ages” seems eons away. 

The set-up goes on and on. We don’t go back to the future for nearly an hour, and the girls finally hop into the Jaguar convertible moments before intermission.

In Act Two, when they head to Arizona, that Jag glides like a dump truck on the 405.

As soon as we get a taste of Gwendolyn Sanford and Brandon Jay’s score, we’re inclined to send it back to the kitchen. Its overabundance of songs are the sort of generic, exclamation-point Broadway pop that sounds like a cheap parody of “Legally Blonde.” 

Why even compose a new score? While normally I’m pro-originality, “Romy and Michele” would be better off as, well, staying a movie, but also a jukebox musical. The hits of No Doubt, Cyndi Lauper, The Go-Gos and Bananarama are firmly baked into the story’s identity. They linger here like phantom limbs.

It’s easy to understand why book writer Robin Schiff, who also wrote the film, thought her creation could work as a musical. The characters first debuted in a sketch onstage at the Groundlings. Perhaps she saw it as coming full circle. 

Musicals, be they hilarious or weepy, are emotional creatures, though. Romy and Michele are not. They are bone-dry, pathetic, easy-to-love, Gen X snark machines. Big exuberant songs butt heads with their monotone essence. There is no way to sing well while being detached or with sarcasm. “Business Woman’s Special” should not be a full-blown production number.

Alas.     

Jot this down on a Post-It note: Skip “Romy and Michele: The Musical.”