Directed by Stephen Chbosky — Screenplay by Steven Levenson.
I decided to skip Dear Evan Hansen, the coming-of-age film musical based on a stage musical of the same name, back when it was first released in theaters. I did this in spite of the fact that I had heard the Benj Pasek and Justin Paul songs beforehand (and really liked quite a few of them — I know the lyrics to some of them from end to end). The story follows a depressed and lonely seventeen-year-old high school student, named Evan Hansen (played by Ben Platt), who suffers from extreme social anxiety. One day, he runs into Connor Murphy (played by Colton Ryan) — the troubled brother of Zoe Murphy (played by Kaitlyn Dever), whom Evan has a crush on — and Connor, due to a misunderstanding, decides to take Evan Hansen’s personal letter home with him. Sometime later, Evan finds out that Connor has taken his own life, and that the Murphy family thinks that Evan’s letter was left as a suicide note for the friend they never knew he had. Evan, not knowing how to get out of the situation, then decides to fabricate this lie that he and Connor were best friends, and, in the process, he gets to be a part of the kind of family he always wanted to be in.
You know, the thing is that adapting this story is such a complex and problematic balancing act that even one misstep can sink the entire ship — and I think this adaptation makes more than just one misstep. I get why they wanted Ben Platt to play his Tony-winning role in the adaptation, but… there’s a time for that and, well, perhaps that moment passed a while back. They should’ve included Platt in a different role and maybe even written a new song for him to sing as that character. Instead, they’ve thrown a bunch of distracting, ill-fitting prosthetics, make-up, and hairstyling on top of Platt, and what it does is make the close-ups feel like a magnifying glass trying to highlight the artificiality of it all. Look, Ben Platt is a talented actor and singer, but here he, unfortunately, plays the main part like he’s performing for the back row in a theater when the performance ought to have been adjusted for the big screen with subtleties rather than big exaggerations.
The narrative deals with delicate issues that need our attention, but some of the choices that have been made here make it feel even more inappropriate than it perhaps already was. Axing “Good For You,” even though it is a song that confronts Evan with his actions, is absolutely baffling. In general, the fact that its protagonist exploits another character’s death-by-suicide to get closer to his crush and gain popularity is… Well, that’s a tough story to get people on board with. Still, it should also be said that even though a protagonist is a certain way that does not at all mean the film and its filmmakers automatically side with said character — but by not including “Good For You,” that leads me to wonder if the filmmakers failed to fully understand the point of it all. It also doesn’t help that the final act just sort of… Happens without the heft that this type of conclusion should have. It’s unsatisfying and unconvincing.
Anyway, I think, as a musical, Chbosky fails to pair the gorgeous music with appropriate visuals — “Sincerely Me,” gets kind of close, but that’s about it. It’s often too static. It’s too inert. It’s too unimaginative. The film is also just overlong and lacking in energy — it’s often too flat or overlit in between the music sequences. There are some decent performances with Kaitlyn Dever being the standout, to me, but also by not including “Anybody Have a Map,” you’re robbing the film of multiple perspectives and several supporting actors a moment with meat on the bone.
I do think there is a way to take the delicate issues and problematic story and handle it all in a way that feels appropriate, and I think there is a way to handle the balancing act better while still pairing the excellent music with the kind of visuals the music merits and making it a successful musical. But I don’t know that we’ll ever get to see that. This adaptation might have tarnished its reputation, ahem, for forever.
4 out of 10
– Review Written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
I'm Jeffrey Rex 