Dear Evan Hansen Is An Absolute Heartwarmer

Dear Evan Hansen

Rating: *** ½

Dear Evan Hansen Movie Review: This is the most  underrated  film of  the year. A  musical with heart soul  and  guts which resinstates one’s fate in  the power of love and music to heal broken hearts.

Unless  you are not informed about happenings in the  world of cinema  or  you live under a  rock, you must be aware that the Broadway -styled  musical has made a comeback in American cinema.We recently had the stunning Annette.We will soon  have Steven  Spielberg’s West Side Story.

 In  the meanwhile there is  this dear dear movie, so brimming with emotions  songs wit and  vivacity I  wanted to watch it  all  over again after  its 2 hours and  12  minutes of playing-time.

 Based  on  the blockbuster Broadway play of  the same name in  2015, the film version is a  lyrical  love letter to the  original . The  very talented  Ben Platt at age 28, pulls  off the role of  a 17-year  old  misfit with an endearing ease. Platt plays  Evan Hansen,a social misfit who  is mistaken to be the best friend of a  student  Connor who commits  suicide.  Rather than nip the  lie in the bud, Evan Hansen  allows it to grow  and  spread , causing  progressive  and illimitable  hurt to the  dead boy’s family.

It’s a story oozing emotions, conveying both hurt and healing sometimes simultaneously. The  director with a screenplay that doesn’t shy of exhibiting emotions, milks the melodrama for  all its worth. The songs are  superbly knitted  into the narrative and  used not as charming diversions but to  carry  the  plot ahead. For instance when Evan finally confesses his  subterfuge   to Connor’s  parents( the gifted Amy Adams and the  relatively  average Danny Pino) he does  it in song form, choking and sputtering over  the words and  yet staying in  tune.

 It’s an  astounding  performance  catching the curves and dips of the  character’s fragile mind with  strong sturdy hands.Yup, Oliver Platt may  be  7 years  too old to play Hansen. But who cares! He owns the  character with a silent sublimity.The  rest  of  the cast is  also remarkably well-tuned to  the  mood of melancholic musicality fusing the  feelings of  frugality and fragility.

The  plot is carpeted with musical tropes:  a life-changing  tragedy, a romance between the  dead boy’s sister and  the hero pretending to be  the  suicide  victim’s best friend. I also loved  the mother-son relationship that Platt and the  wonderful Julianne Moore created between them, almost like  a universe  isolated from the main event.

Don’t go by the scathing reviews of the film. They are  missing the point. The transition from the Broadway  play to  cinema  could not have been smoother. The  film  secretes an  aching sweetness at  its heart.Only  good  people can create something so  noble. No point in being cynical about it.We  sometimes get  the movies we don’t deserve. This is  one   of them.