Dear Evan Hansen

The film adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen is an example of something that works beautifully on the stage, but never quite connects on the big screen.  It's an odd experience, because the film itself is faithful to the source for the most part, and does no disrespect to it.  There's just something curiously flat about this film, and I think a lot of elements contribute to it.  The direction by Stephen Chbosky (Wonder) is lifeless, as are the musical sequences, which aside from a few select instances, are usually filmed by simply showing the actors just standing around, singing to each other.  

And yet, there are moments here that still resonate.  How can they not?  This is a powerful story that's been flatly told on the big screen by a cast that is sometimes giving it their all, and in other cases, seem a bit adrift.  It was an odd experience watching this film, because I have such strong memories of seeing the original Broadway cast back in November 2016, just two days after it had started performances.  It resonated so strongly with me that I was moved to tears by certain moments and songs.  I went to see a touring production in Chicago in early 2019, and again, had the same experience.  Now here is this movie, which managed to produce hardly a sniffle from me.  I don't think anything has been lost in translation, necessarily.  I just think the big screen is not where this musical belongs.

There is simply a stiffness to this material that I did not detect the two times I saw it on the stage, and I think there are two key elements that lead to this.  One is how Chbosky has decided to shoot this as a standard drama film, and not as a musical.  Save for one number that comes about the 30 minute mark or so ("Sincerely, Me"), there is no real choreography here.  He seems to be going for a kind of realism approach, which doesn't work when your characters are breaking into song.  And so, we get a vast number of musical sequences that consist of absolutely nothing but characters standing or sitting across from each other, singing, or sometimes walking while they sing.  Not that the story of Dear Evan Hansen needs a lot of grand flash and spectacle, but it also doesn't need to be this visually drab.  The fact that only the song I mentioned and one other ("You Will Be Found") are the only two that have anything visually interesting happen during them makes this feel very dragged out and pokey, much more than it did on the stage.

The other contributing factor to this film's lack of power over the original is its orchestrations, which sound a bit weak and thin, and genuinely make every song sound exactly the same.  I have listened to the Original Broadway Cast Recording of the show numerous times, and it's never felt quite as repetitive as it does here.  Like the film itself, there is something flat to the score and the songs that made it into the film. (Some have been removed, and two not in the original have been added.) There is nothing off or necessarily "wrong" about how the Tony-winning score by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (they did the songs for La La Land and The Greatest Showman) has been interpreted here.  It simply feels thinner and more similar than the orchestrations on the stage.  The songs were a big part of the production's power, and hearing them played here in such a skimpy way, it has definitely lost something.  

This is despite the film's casting of the original Broadway star, Ben Platt, in the title role.  Platt, who turned 28 on the day the film was released, looks a bit awkward blown up on the big screen playing the 17-year-old Evan Hansen.  This is obviously nothing new in Hollywood, since actors pushing 30 (or older) have been playing teenagers in films for decades.  Still, the make up and Platt's presence up on the screen is more awkward than how he came across on the stage nearly five years ago.  There has been some controversy behind the casting, since his father Marc Platt, is credited as the lead producer of the film.  The truth is, Platt is still wonderful in the role, and is in strong voice.  He simply has physically outgrown it.  I'm sure there will be many fans who will be happy to just get his performance captured on film.  I just wish it had happened sooner, or perhaps if the original Broadway production had been filmed similar to last year's Hamilton.

His Evan Hansen is a socially awkward and depressed High School Senior who feels invisible to everyone around him, has a hurried mother (Julianne Moore, underused here) who always seems too busy for him, and the one person at school who talks to him is "family friend" Jared (Nik Dodani), who seems like he barely tolerates his presence.  The plot is kicked off when Evan is at school, writing a letter to himself, which his therapist has recommended as an emotional exercise.  Said letter is intercepted by school hothead Connor Murphy (Colton Ryan), who runs off with it.  Days later, Evan learns that Connor has taken his own life, and that Evan's letter was found with him.  His grief-stricken parents (Amy Adams and Danny Pino) mistake it for a suicide note that was directed at Evan personally, and believe that Evan was friends with their son.

Evan makes some weak attempts to deny this, but it's not long before he is telling a string of lies about the time he spent with Connor in order to ease the grief of the Murphy family, including Connor's sister Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever), whom Evan has always secretly admired from afar, and now gets a chance to talk to for the first time.  The lie spirals into an anti-suicide project spearheaded by a fellow student Alana (Amandla Stenberg), a rousing speech that goes viral on line, and ultimately Evan feeling divided between the lie itself, and who he really is and was before this all happened.  The story's focus on social media, and how a personal tragedy changes how other people see you are just as powerful as before, but the weak musical sequences keep on getting in the way here, rather than adding to the power of the story like it does on the stage.

Dear Evan Hansen is a missed opportunity, and might have been better suited on the big screen not as a musical, but rather as an adaptation of the novel that came from the musical.  If the filmmakers were trying for a starkly real look at the story, having its cast engaging in lifeless musical numbers was not the way to go about it, and perhaps a more straight forward dramatic approach would have been preferred.  There is just something off about the film in general, and yet, there are also plenty of moments that work.  It's a frustrating film, especially for those who know the power that it holds on the stage.

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