Mr. Movie | Make an exception for musical ‘Dear Evan Hansen’
Evan Hansen tells a lie. And it’s a doozy.
His big lie is so very like what a socially anxious, very nervous and totally unsure of his place in the universe, high school-aged boy might make up. To Hansen, anything is better than being nothing.
The “anything” includes telling a whopper of a lie.
To defend Evan a bit, he didn’t really want to tell the lie or continue telling the lie. Things just kind of happen sometimes and what happened to Evan is one of those odd life things that just — well — happen.
Of course, if you’re older than 30 you have to empty your mind of all things mature and push yourself to go back to those glory days of high school and the insecurities that went along with your experience.
For those raised in the 1950s to the 1970s, it’s kind of hard to wrap your head around all the social awkwardness and social anxiety that kids today, and those Hansen’s age, experience. We called the normal part of growing up.
If that’s you, just put your experience aside and enjoy the very good music and the excellent acting.
Evan Hansen is a senior in high school and a complete dweeb. The boy has one iffy friend, a practically zero relationship with his way-too-busy mom and no life whatsoever. Evan has a broken arm and is so pathetic that no one will sign his cast.
One day the very discouraged Evan writes a letter to himself wondering if anyone would care — or even notice — if he was no longer there.
While at school, Evan prints the letter. Connor Murphy finds it in the printer. He is a mentally unbalanced, drug-addled and somewhat violent boy. Connor thinks it’s about him and that Evan is making fun of him. In an outburst, Connor attacks Evan, hangs onto the letter and leaves.
Later, Connor commits suicide and his parents find the letter folded up in his pocket.
They think the friendless Connor had finally found a friend and beg Evan to share details. Not really wanting to lie but also not wanting to disappoint, Evan says they were good friends. He later creates bogus emails and other contacts to prove the friendship.
Suddenly, Evan is popular at school.
People notice him. Evan — who normally sits alone at lunch and in classes — likes but hates the attention. Then a girl who was actually on somewhat friendly terms with Connor creates a fund to dedicate an orchard to Connor so he’ll never be forgotten. She begs Evan to become involved and he does — reluctantly.
With the creation of the fund come more complications because — as we all know — big lies tend to grow into bigger ones until they implode.
The story is punctuated with high quality music and lyrics and is acted out by an incredibly good cast starting with Ben Platt who won a Tony for the original role. The Broadway musical also won a bunch of others.
Platt is a bari-tenor with a many-octave, blow-you-away voice. The guy can big time belt it out. After playing the part on Broadway and winning the Tony, Platt is really familiar and comfortable with his character. He plays Evan as a teetering teen who knows everything in his world is a whisper away from collapsing.
Evan lies, hates it, but too late, he can’t stop.
The supporting cast is also superb. Julianne Moore is Evan’s mom, Kaitlyn Dever (“Booksmart, TV’s Last Man Standing”) plays Connor’s sister, Zoe and Amy Adams and Danny Pino are the poor dead boy’s guilty, grieving but now uplifted parents. Two other key roles are from Amandla Stenberg (“The Hate U Give”) and Colton Ryan who plays Connor.
All can sing, and do justice to the music, the lyrics, and the story.
The screenplay is written by Steven Levenson from the book based on his stage play. It’s directed by Stephen Chbosky wrote and directed the wonderful coming of age tale, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and “Wonder.”
Since I haven’t seen the stage play I can’t compare, but the great thing about Chbosky’s direction is not clogging the movie up with a lot of dancing. The music speaks for itself and drives the movie.
If there is a flaw it’s the subject matter and film’s length. A lot of older people aren’t going to get the current view of how being a teenager stress is handled. That’s foreign, head-scratching territory. My recommendation is plug your nose and go for it. You might learn something.
The film’s length is another issue. It seems kind of dragged out at 2:17 but fortunately, the music and lyrics are so good that it’s not a drag.
Regular readers are — at this point — doing a lot of head shaking and it’s not because of the social anxiety comments or my take on the movie. It comes from the review I posted a couple of weeks ago of the musical movie, “Everybody’s Talking about Jaime.” I pointed out that I don’t really like musicals and the pop music that accompanies them. Not even close and I really don’t.
But here we are at “Dear Evan Hansen.”
This one is an exception.
The music by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul is just short of phenomenal. The story is a tough one to care about but the music and the acting make it worth struggling through.
Rated PG-13 for mature themes. It’s playing at the Fairchild Cinemas Pasco, Queensgate 12 and Southgate 10 and at the AMC Classic Kennewick 12.
Rating: 4 out of 5
This story was originally published September 24, 2021 at 12:42 PM with the headline "Mr. Movie | Make an exception for musical ‘Dear Evan Hansen’."