Dear Evan Hansen
universal picturesHoping to find the same success as other Tony-winning musicals – such as Amadeus and The Sound of Music – that made a jump to the big screen and found Oscar success, Dear Evan Hansen has finally found its theatrical release 4-years after the stage production won Best Musical at the 71st Tony Awards. With Stephen Chbosky behind the project as director, Dear Evan Hansen brings audiences the story of the socially awkward and depressed teen Evan Hansen (Ben Platt) who ends up in the middle of a lie. Another kid named Connor Murphy (Colton Ryan) has killed himself and due to a series of unfortunate events, Murphy's family ends up believing that their son and Evan were secretly best friends. Evan, who is dealing with his own struggles at home due to his mom Heidi (Julianne Moore) having to take extra shifts, goes along with this lie. Not just does this bring him the parental closeness he desires from Murphy's mom, Cynthia (Amy Adams), and stepfather, Larry (Danny Pino), but it also allows Evan to get closer to Murphy's mourning sister, Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever), who he has a crush on. While the story was already debatable when it comes to morality on the stage, the screen adaptation does it no favors by becoming a mismanaged and damaging expression of these very real social issues that disappoints on nearly every level.
Before one can talk about the thematic problems of Dear Evan Hansen, it almost feels required that one talks about the elephant in the room or, rather, the adult in the high school: Ben Platt. Largely the conversation surrounding the film has been dedicated to mocking Platt's involvement, as the 28-year old man looks rather awkward and out of place among actual teenagers. While Platt has attempted to defend his involvement by pointing to the years he spent with the character on stage, one has to think that – considering just how bad his performance is even beyond the age issue – to justify actively hurting the story because of this seems laughable. Platt doesn't just look awkward but is actively bad in the role of Evan as he brings everything needed for a stage performance to the big screen. His mannerisms and dialect are exaggerated and outward, meant to capture the hearts and emotions of audiences sitting all the way up in the balcony. On the big screen with intimate cinematography and more focus put on Evan, this feels awkward and almost comedic.
While there is no actor that quite matches just how out of place and awkward Platt is, to say the rest of the cast delivers would simply be a lie. The film largely cuts most of the major moments of emotion from the characters that Amy Adams, Danny Pino and Julianne Moore play, which feels disappointing not just due to the lackluster use of these solid actors but also due to its effect on the narrative. Dear Evan Hansen's plot feels underbaked and confusing with the central conflict never quite being fleshed out how it is in the play. Specifically, the conflict between Evan and his mother is drastically reduced and overlooked, which is confusing, as it ultimately is one of if not the biggest character motivations for Evan. At a whopping 137-minutes, it isn't like the film cut these elements for the purpose of creating a cleaner runtime but rather because it instead wanted to add a completely unneeded side story that expands on the character of Alana Beck (Amandla Stenberg) and makes her almost the second biggest character of the film. While this switch in focus is clearly meant to make Dear Evan Hansen carry a more directly universal message, it falls flat and feels both boring and detrimental to the film's narrative.
This causes multiple problems. It doesn’t just castrate the complexity of the film's characters, but it causes a dangerous form of representation to exist within the project. Rather than truly justifying the character of Evan and getting into the specifics of why he does these truly horrendous things – which already felt questionable and rather underdeveloped in the stage version – the film relies on a very general acceptance of these actions through the lens of depression and anxiety. These things which Evan suffer from are supposed to justify Evan acting like a true sociopath leading general audiences, who don't necessarily understand what these feelings are like, to assume that they are common for people suffering from them. This is as harmful and offensive as it is far from the truth. Not everyone who has depression ends up lying to a dead kid's family who is mourning the death of their son to get with their daughter. This is a delicate development that needs a level of craft and narrative support to work – but Dear Evan Hansen ultimately fails.
This lack of craft is felt not just thematically but also technically. Despite the experience both director Stephen Chbosky and cinematographer Brandon Trost have within the film industry, Dear Evan Hansen feels cheap and confused in its filmmaking. The film features incredibly awkward composition and editing that feels inexperienced and lost. It is clear that both the action in front of and behind the camera was not in sync and that every element of the film was operating on its own flawed wavelength. Considering the emotional power at which Chbosky's previous films The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Wonder achieved, Dear Evan Hansen comes off as near embarrassing.
Both for fans of the play and newcomers to the story, the film adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen is a complete failure. The film comes off as a completely mismanaged and lackluster feature that rids itself of any potential for overcoming its already difficult narrative. The film is boring and badly made, as characters lack much in the way of motivation or justification for how awful they are. Evan is a sociopath and the representation within the film is dangerous, almost feeling as nasty as a project like 13 Reasons Why. This is a note no one should read and, all around, the film should be buried by all parties involved.
