DEAR EVAN HANSEN Movie Musical - News & Discussion Thread — Page 40

I will say I personally am not a fan of this musical and completely agree with peoples critiques of the material but still enjoyed it for what it was. I was late to the game in finally seeing the stage production but had thoroughly enjoyed the cast album in the years prior to seeing it. Even though this isn’t the type of production he tends to direct, I kept wondering how it would have been if David Cromer was at the helm of the original production… Probably because of the way he directed both RENT and N2N in Chicago, two other Michael Greif shows.

I will definitely she the film, but I’ll wait until it’s streaming or I’ll pay for PVOD when available if I decide not to wait for it to be on a streamer. Unless my mom really wants to see it in the theater and I go with her. But I really just came here for two things:



1. LOL at people saying Ann-Margret looked older because she was a smoker. Like being a smoker miraculously ages someone drastically that quickly. Aging from smoking wouldn’t be apparent at all until decades later.


2. I’m just really happy for the positive notices and some flat out raves here that are being given to Kaitlyn Dever. Because that girl is a STAR and I can’t wait to see that star continue to rise.

"Good for you"

Ah yes, while I don't think it would work in the movie, Rachel killed that song on stage. Daily.

Updated On: 9/21/21 at 01:59 PM

The studio, the movie’s producers and star Ben Platt were all caught off guard by critics who savaged the film

I find that incredibly hard to believe that they were ALL caught off guard. They don't all seem like unintelligent people who would all believe that everyone on earth would just embrace this film. Perhap it's because it's 2021 and they think all movies about mental health/illness would automatically be loved?

Nah. The movie still actually has to be good. Which I thought it was. Not great. Just good.

I don't think it's hard to believe they were caught off guard. They clearly all did not have the self awareness to realize Ben was miscast (partially cause his dad gave it the green light) , and him being so miscast would derail the film.

This was clearly a "I'm gonna get you an oscar as well Ben" star vehicle that flopped cause that was leading the charge over the integrity of the film as a whole

Updated On: 9/21/21 at 05:28 PM

Just got back from the screening, and it's just as I have predicted: a reasonably decent movie musical that's neither good nor bad, just in this middle ground that I wished was better than it turned out. First and foremost, unlike Amazon Prime's Cinderella which was a bland and boring waste of time, this one at least has the likes of Kaitlyn Dever, Amy Adams, Amandla Stenberg, and Julianne Moore who truly put their best foot forward; and thanks to them acting and singing their parts very well, they are the sole reasons to watch the movie at all. Also the musical numbers "Sincerely Me", "Requiem", "The Anonymous Ones", and "So Big/So Small" are done very well here that they accidentally make the other numbers feel boring and uninspired on a cinematic/emotional level.

Which brings me to Ben Platt, whose look didn't bug me at all as the critics felt, and he sang the role very well as some has said on here; it's just when it comes to transferring his performance from stage to screen, it didn't pay off as he and director Stephen Chbosky would've hoped. It feels like he's trying way to hard to impress and amaze whereas his co-stars come off more naturally on film with their performances than he does, but that doesn't mean he was bad by any stretch of the imagination. Hopefully Ben learned from this experience so he can apply that for his role as Charley Kringas in Richard Linkletter's upcoming film version of Merrily We Roll Along.

So yeah, if this is something you want to watch then go right ahead, unlike other film adaptations of stage musicals that come off as impassionate and bad, this one at least tried to do something special and good. It's just the crew may or may not have bitten off more than they can chew, but this is a better movie musical than Cats so that made me very happy regardless.

And I'm giving this one a 5 out of 10 that's closer to a 6 than a 4.

gypsy101 said: "get over it people, he’s not young"

All the kids in this movie are too old. So?

After the screening, my friend and I were talking for a bit and he came to an interesting thought that the movie reminded him of Camelot. A Hollywood movie musical that represents the best and worst that the genre could give us, honestly I don't think he's wrong in saying that because the movie was made with high goals from a movie studio to do very well. Some things worked but a lot more other things did not, so it was a very interesting conversation about making such a comparison.

So far my ranking of the movie musicals of 2021 goes something like this:

1. In The Heights

2. Everybody's Talking About Jamie

3. Annette

4. Dear Evan Hansen

5. Cinderella

"Oh, and spare me the 'Grease was a campy comedy and this is a serious drama!" crap. They are both movie musicals so take a seat. On the floor."

lol, that's a pretty big distinction to just ignore though. If it didn't personally have an effect on your enjoyment of the film then that's awesome, but it's silly to say "spare me all the totally valid reasons why the lead actor clearly not being real teenager may have affected your view on the film".

And based on the reviews, it would seem they have a point.

Sutton Ross said: "I saw that he did not look like a teen. I accepted it within 1 second and enjoyed the film. People can deal with it or not see it. But, bitching about something that cannot be changed at this point is pretty dumb. People have had years to accept this news so.....deal."

Thank you. My same assessment: I accepted Platt immediately. He’s playing a teenager therefore in my head, he was a teenager. You suspend disbelief. It’s a movie. Also, these boards would be exploding had they cast an insanely talented teenager in the role and not Platt. The whole “Hollywood doesn’t cast the Tony Award winning actors” nonsense would be rampant, so it’s a no win either way. You cast the acclaimed actor and he looks too old. You don’t cast him and it’s a travesty he wasn’t able to recreate his acclaimed role on film.

Grease is a totally different thing--and from a totally different era. First of all, putting aside the material itself for a moment, it was common up through the 1970's to cast people who looked visibly older than high school age in high school roles. Starting in the mid-80's with the John Hughes movies, that stopped being the case, and even today, there is an effort to cast people who can pass for teenagers, whatever their actual age.

I still think it makes more sense to cast people who look older than high school age in Grease, as the play starts at the high school reunion twenty years later, so the whole sensibility of the show is "an adult memory of teenaged years," so adults playing teenagers works as part of the conceit. Plus, I find it cringey to see kids saying a lot of the lines in Grease (at least, in productions that don't tone it down). Some of the material is pretty raw, and it's easier hearing it issue from the mouths of adults. It doesn't hurt that photos of teenagers from the 1950's actually make them look older than teens do today (a lot of people have commented on this over the years), so there's that, too.

I don't think it makes sense to cast visibly older with a work like Dear Evan Hansen. This is a show that is trying to look seriously at actually teen issues--and issues that are unique to teens today that didn't exist when a lot of us were in our adolescence. At any rate, as far as I can tell, the criticism here isn't that Ben Platt doesn't look like he's in high school, it's specifically that he looks waaaaay past high school age, and significantly older than his fellow "high school" cast mates.

rattleNwoolypenguin said: "“Hollywood doesn’t cast the Tony Award winning actors” nonsense would be rampant, so it’s a no win either way.

But Hollywood sure do cast their children XDDDD"