Usually with the Universally Loved columns, I watch the film, get an idea of where I want to go with the review and belch it out within the same evening.
Not so with Dear Evan Hansen.
I figured out the reason last night and finally had a hook to write this column. This movie is completely unremarkable. It is mediocre. We often talk about on our podcasts how it is easy to talk about a movie you love…or hate. But this is just plain bland.
This is no MGM classic Musical. It doesn’t break into gigantic production numbers but lets the musical numbers flow easily into the situations presented.
The conceit is a highly unlikeable student commits suicide and a letter Evan Hansen writes to himself as an exercise for his therapist treating Evan’s social anxiety is misinterpreted as the young man’s suicide note. This makes everyone believe that Evan is good friends with the not-so-dearly departed and gives Evan access to his sister who Evan has loved from afar. Evan simply refuses, for much of the film, to come clean.
Given that set up, you could move this into a broad farce. For some reason though, despite how this set up becomes dark and cringey once you really examine it, this movie does exactly that. They try to be realistic and that makes the film uncomfortable to watch and leaves you almost no one to cheer for in the flick.
That’s not something you should accept in a musical. That is also likely why this film is widely derided.
The music: there are about two really great songs in here, one fairly good one, and the rest appear to be completely generic. This is not a particularly strong hitting percentage and overall I was disappointed. I had discovered the song “Waving Through A Window” on my Echo and really liked it. I was disappointed then, when most of the other tunes in the film just didn’t measure up.
Kaitlyn Dever, who I first saw as Eve on Last Man Standing, does a fine job here. Ben Platt, who originated the role on Broadway, has been criticized for being too old to play the role generally….I could have cared less. I found the character itself to be just shy of morally corrupt and didn’t find the character likable so I don’t know what Platt could do with it. My main dig on this film is just that the key characters in the film are just plain unlikeable or worse, reprehensible. It’s tough to get behind a film littered with these morally questionable and intelligence obstructed folks (really? You didn’t know if your son had any friends despite how terrible Evan Hansen is at selling this deceit?).
Honestly, I don’t think you can make a light hearted musical about teenage suicide, mental illness, anxiety and family dysfunction. The themes of the perceived invisibility of teenagers and the overall medication of any of their issues relating to the world don’t exactly make me want to get out there and belt out a tune while tap dancing between school lockers.
Give me Grease. This is more Grime.
Ultimately Evan Hansen is seduced by being part of this other boy’s family. I hated this because, frankly, his own family was completely unappreciated by him despite the support they provided. Ungrateful little snot. I just couldn’t stand the character I was forced to spend all this time with.
You know what? Maybe this movie isn’t mediocre after all. Maybe is just bad in a way where it leaves me as dulled to my senses as the characters sleepwalking through their lives on screen. Maybe that is the point.
Even then…if that is the point, it is nothing I want to sing and dance about.