Dear Evan Hansen: A letter to remember

Dear Evan Hansen (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.24.21

Well, this is an emotional hurricane.

 

The Broadway production of Dear Evan Hansen won six of its nine Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical, in many cases edging out Come From Away (which was Broadway robbery, in my humble opinion, but that’s a separate conversation).

 

Although circumstances have brought him closer to the girl he has long adored from
afar, Evan (Ben Platt) knows that his blossoming relationship with Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever)
is built upon a lie.

Evan’s messages of inclusion, self-acceptance and mended fences obviously resonated strongly with theatergoers, and I’m sure the same will be true of filmgoers. It’s refreshing to see a story about the importance of acknowledging one’s mistakes … sincerely, and in public. (A lot of politicians could learn from this example.)

That said, the story also veers dangerously close to the ragged edge of unpardonable behavior … and whether matters slide off that cliff, will depend on the individual viewer.

 

Playwright Steven Levenson, one of the Tony winners, has transformed his own book into this screenplay; Broadway star Ben Platt, also a Tony winner, reprises his lead role here. Ergo, there’s no question of fidelity … although I note the addition of two new songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (again, Tony winners), one of which — along with some, ah, adjustments by Levenson — definitely softens the harshness of the finale.

 

But it’s still painfully brutal.

 

Evan is a traditional musical, with distinct songs that enhance (or interrupt) a conventional storyline. That makes it a bit retro in this post-Les Misérables and Hamilton era, with most musicals relying more heavily on rap and operetta stagings. This softer, gentler approach is absolutely right for Evan, given its focus on vulnerability and fragility.

 

Director Stephen Chbosky echoes this choice. Most of the songs are poignant ballads, and you’ll find no opulent production numbers here; the introductory montage is as fancy as matters get.

 

High school senior Evan Hansen (Platt) has long suffered from social anxiety; he feels isolated, forever on the outside looking in (“Waving Through a Window”). One arm is in a cast — the reason for this injury, tellingly, remains undisclosed — and nobody is willing to sign it: not even his sole friend, Jared (Nik Dodani, channeling his near-identical role in Netflix’s Atypical).

 

Evan writes motivational letters to himself, as a means of bucking up his optimism about what might be good about each day. Such hopes do not include an unfortunate encounter with the volatile Connor Murphy (Colton Ryan) — also a loner, but angry and aggressive — who shoves Evan in the school hallway. Connor’s younger sister Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever) apologizes for this, which makes it worse, because Evan has long crushed on her.

 

Everything, Everything: Adorable, adorable

Everything, Everything (2017) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for mild sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.19.17

Nicola Yoon’s fans will be over the moon.

They really couldn’t ask for more. Director Stella Meghie’s adaptation of Everything, Everything benefits from the savvy casting of two engaging stars — Amandla Stenberg and Nick Robinson — and a script (J. Mills Goodloe) that adheres faithfully to the 2015 young adult best-seller.

Once Olly (Nick Robinson) learns that Maddy (Amandla Stenberg) cannot ever leave her
house, he struggles for ways to help "imagine" her into the big, wide, outside world.

The film is swooningly romantic, start to finish, and guaranteed to send its target audience into dreamy euphoria.

The rest of us ... perhaps not.

Folks who enjoy both books and films have long known that some things work very well on the printed page, not so much on the big screen. Suspension of disbelief is easier, when we concoct the pictures in our minds; we gloss over inconvenient details likely to interfere with the unfolding narrative.

Having such a story translated into the real world of a motion picture brings such “problems” into the crisp focus of cinematographer Igor Jadue-Lillo’s lens, making them impossible to ignore. Contrivance becomes obvious, particularly since the story unfolds much faster, in a 96-minute film, than in a 336-page novel. Questions emerge; eyebrows lift; and — worst case — the spell is broken.

And, sadly, Meghie and Goodloe make that very likely to occur. They’re not sufficiently careful with niggly little details that Yoon’s readers will be happy to overlook, but which will prompt frowns from the uninitiated.

Suburban-dwelling Madeline Whittier (Stenberg), days shy of her 18th birthday, suffers from severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), popularly known as “bubble baby disease.” Since infancy, she has been confined to a hermetically sealed wing of the Los Angeles house that she shares with her mother, Pauline (Anika Noni Rose), a physician who cares for her around the clock.

Maddy cannot leave the house, or come in contact with anything that hasn’t been thoroughly sanitized. Her sole contact with the outer world is Carla (Ana de la Reguera), the nurse who visits each day while Pauline is at work, and Carla’s teenage daughter, Rosa (Danube R. Hermosillo). Everything they wear must be disinfected, each time they enter the house.

(Just in passing, Pauline must be an über-specialist who makes more money than God, because the state-of-the-art medical and physical enhancements to this home didn’t come cheap, and would be atrociously expensive to maintain. And that’s niggly detail No. 1.)