Dear Evan Hansen (2021)
Directed by Stephen Chbosky
Evan Hansen, a high schooler with social anxiety, unintentionally gets caught up in a lie after the family of a classmate who committed suicide mistakes one of Hansen’s letters for their son’s suicide note.
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5 films that influenced Dear Evan Hansen
What critics say influenced Dear Evan Hansen
Despite being filled with catchy rock-pop bops and ballads from the La La Land - The Greatest Showman pairing of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the 2016 Broadway juggernaut – six Tonys, one Grammy – works through a nexus of millennial hot-button topics, flitting between anxiety disorders, abject loneliness and the corrosive need to be popular fuelled by social media.
While there’s love for the La La Land ’s (2016) and Anna and the Apocalypse ’s (2017) of the world, 2021 boasts the theatrical adaptations of beloved modern musicals.
And then the whispery theater-emo crescendos into a yearnspirational power ballad, the specialty of songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul who, in terms of their past work, have written Greatest Showman bombast and lazily dressed it up as La La Land -style emotional directness.
Complicating the issue is Evan's borderline-stalker crush on Connor's sister, Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever, who has been playing high school-age roles since 2013's "The Spectacular Now").
And if Anne Hathaway can win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for arguably just one song in “Les Miserables,” then Julianne Moore as Evan’s mother Heidi should be in contention for her emotionally climactic performance of “So Big / So Small.”
Alas, like Jon M. Chu going from the wonderful “Crazy Rich Asians” to getting in over his head with the musical “In The Heights,” Chbosky is defeated by having to preserve much of a leaden musical score.
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With six Tony Awards and a Grammy already under its belt, expectations are lofty for this effort from The Perks of Being a Wallflower writer-director Stephen Chbosky, who taps original Broadway star Ben Platt to reprise his role as the titular teen.
In theory, who better to direct the film version than “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” director Steven Chbosky, a YA novelist with a proven track record for capturing the teenage outsider experience (though Logan Lerman always struck me as a little too with-it to be a wallflower)?
“Evan Hansen” is a story set in living rooms, bedrooms and school hallways, and director Stephen Chbosky (“The Perks of Being a Wallflower”) keeps all these places realistic.
Dear Evan Hansen is directed by Stephen Chbosky, who has mined similar territory before with The Perks of Being a Wallflower (adapted from his own novel) and Wonder .
Screenwriter Steven Levenson (adapting his book for the stage musical) and director Stephen Chbosky (a specialist in tormented youth, i.e. “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and “Wonder”) have done an effective job of opening up the stage show, delivering rapid-fire montages of teen life and angst (like “Bye Bye Birdie” for pessimists) and employing judiciously selected cutaway shots to flesh out what otherwise would be one guy standing alone and singing.
At least it’s a well-meaning misfire on the part of director Stephen Chbosky (“The Perks of Being a Wallflower”).