I’m not kidding. The sheer ineptitude of this show, inspired by the Spider-Man comic books, loses its shock value early. After 15 or 20 minutes, the central question you keep asking yourself is likely to change from “How can $65 million look so cheap?” to “How long before I’m out of here?”

Directed by Julie Taymor, who wrote the show’s book with Glen Berger, and featuring songs by U2’s Bono and the Edge, “Spider-Man” is not only the most expensive musical ever to hit Broadway; it may also rank among the worst.

I would like to acknowledge here that “Spider-Man” doesn’t officially open until March 15; at least that’s the last date I heard. But since this show was looking as if it might settle into being an unending work in progress — with Ms. Taymor playing Michelangelo to her notion of a Sistine Chapel on Broadway — my editors and I decided I might as well check out “Spider-Man” around Monday, the night it was supposed to have opened before its latest postponement.

You are of course entitled to disagree with our decision. But from what I saw on Saturday night, “Spider-Man” is so grievously broken in every respect that it is beyond repair. Fans of Ms. Taymor’s work on the long-running musical “The Lion King,” adapted from the animated Walt Disney feature, will have to squint charitably to see evidence of her talent.

True, signature Taymor touches like airborne puppets, elaborate masks and perspective-skewing sets (George Tsypin is the scenic designer) are all on hand. But they never connect into a comprehensible story with any momentum. Often you feel as if you were watching the installation of Christmas windows at a fancy department store. At other times the impression is of being on a soundstage where a music video is being filmed in the early 1980s. (Daniel Ezralow’s choreography is pure vintage MTV.)

Nothing looks truly new, including the much-vaunted flying sequences in which some poor sap is strapped into an all-too-visible harness and hoisted uneasily above the audience. (Aren’t they doing just that across the street in “Mary Poppins”?) This is especially unfortunate, since Ms. Taymor and her collaborators have spoken frequently about blazing new frontiers with “Spider-Man,” of venturing where no theater artist (pardon me, I mean artiste) has dared to venture before.