BEFORE: OK, without a doubt, for sure, this just HAS to be the last film that played at the AMC Village in the summer of 2021 while I worked there. I realize that the theater had 7 screens, which meant a LOT of me bouncing around from theater to theater as I was sweeping up - but come on, how many films came out that summer? And how do I remember them all? And why does my brain keep flashing back to that summer? The hours were long, the work was strenuous, I must have emptied every garbage can in that building seventy dozen times and used, well, an infinity number of plastic trash bags, and fed countless NYC pigeons with all of the popcorn that ended up on the sidewalk. Sure, I made some friends there, but I think almost all of them have moved on, even the theater manager. If I had just stuck it out there for another 5 years, maybe I could have been a manager too - but I just didn't see myself doing that.
I went back there twice this year, to see "The Flash" and "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse", on discount Tuesdays, and only recognized a couple people - everyone else, I guess I'll meet you all again somewhere on down the road. So let me take one quick look back at the summer of 2021 - "The Suicide Squad", "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings", "Free Guy", "Black Widow", "Jungle Cruise", "Cruella", "In the Heights", "Stillwater", "Candyman", "Space Jam: A New Legacy", "Escape Room: Tournament of Champions", "Respect", "The Forever Purge", "The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard", "A Quiet Place Part II", "Luca", "The Sparks Brothers", "Old", "Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins", "The Green Knight" and of course, "F9: The Fast Saga". These were the movies we got excited about, until we realized we were going to have to sweep up popcorn during the end credits, so we'd have to listen to their annoying music during the credits and we'd probably see whatever post-credits surprises awaited, essentially spoiling the endings for us.
But man, that was a big summer for movies - probably because theaters were closed for most of 2020, so Hollywood sat on some of their big blockbuster movies until theaters could re-open, and then BOOM, they all hit at once. Now we're looking at another dry spell coming up, with the writers and actors strikes still going on, so I'm guessing the studios released everything they had during 2022 and 2023, and then maybe next summer there won't be anything to watch, and more theaters are going to close.
Nik Dodani carries over from "Escape Room: Tournament of Champions" - I know he only appeared in the flashback scenes, but that counts for my purposes.
THE PLOT: Adaptation of the Tony Award-winning musical about Evan Hansen, a high-school senior with social anxiety disorder, and his journey of self-discovery and acceptance after a classmate's suicide.
AFTER: Yeah, this seems like a very divisive film - it looks like there are two separate camps - people who love this film (and the play it's based on) really really REALLY connect with it, to the point of obsession, then there's the other group of people who scratch their heads and don't quite "get it", so you can put me in the second group, I think. Sure, it's got something to say for people with Social Anxiety Disorder, but that didn't really exist when I was in high school, we just identified as "freaks" or "geeks" or thought of others as "band nerds" or "that weird kid who hangs out in the library". Every single high-schooler has rough days, and sure, there were days I didn't want to go, but I kept at it and I came out the other side. It's only four years, so suck it up and move on, don't take the easy way out and consider suicide as an option, because it's not a very good solution.
Here Evan Hansen gets kind of bullied by Connor Murphy, and for once, a character takes kind of the right move to deal with a bully. You can't fight back, because you'll lose and also get in trouble yourself, you can't ignore them, because that only pisses them off, but you CAN endure their ribbing, kind of pseudo-befriend them, and try to outsmart them at the same time. That's kind of what happens here, Evan realizes that Connor is a troubled kid who is lashing out, he must have his own troubles and is looking for a way to get his anger out. Both Evan and Connor are dealing with absent fathers, which has been a common theme here at the Movie Year for the past week or so. Evan's father lives in Colorado, and Connor's father died years ago, but he has a stepfather now. As we've seen so often, all of the blame can be traced back to adult white men, who either leave their families or have the nerve to die, thus also leaving their families. This is why everyone was so screwed up in "The People We Hate at the Wedding", because of the absent fathers.
Evan's therapist suggests that he writes letters to himself, for encouragement and to help him sort out his issues - and for some reason he prints this letter in the school computer's lab (this doesn't make sense, you don't need to print out a letter TO YOURSELF, you just read it, right?) and then by another contrivance, Connor gets to the printer first and sees the letter, figures out that Evan has a crush on his sister, Zoe, and then loses it. Geez, and he had JUST signed Evan's cast, too, which seemed to be a positive (?) step forward in their budding non-friendship.
Three days later, Connor's parents meet with Evan at the school, and give him his letter back, but they think that it's Connor's suicide note. Connor took the easy (?) way out, because of all his other problems which we can't even really get into because they're so vague. But the parents are delighted to find out their son had a friend, and they want to know all about how much time Evan spent with their son, and what they did together, so Evan not only maintains the mistaken impression that Connor wrote the letter, he builds up a whole story about spending time with Connor, going to an apple orchard and climbing trees, helping him turn his attitude around and getting off drugs. Evan then enlists the help of his "family friend" and classmate Jared to back-date fake e-mails to support his story of communicating with Connor, and the parents are eager to believe that their son had other e-mail accounts they didn't know about, because they want very badly to believe their son was a good kid who was working on himself.
Evan suddenly finds himself with a second pseudo-family that accepts him and wants to spend time with him (while his own mother is a nurse who works long hours and he barely ever sees her.). Also, he's popular at school as the kid who befriended the troubled kid and tried to help him, even though the whole story is a fabrication, a lie. Gee, you don't suppose that at some point people are going to realize that the timeline of Evan's broken arm doesn't really work, and that means everything's going to unravel at some point? Maybe I've read too much about this story over the past few years, because I saw the turns coming from a mile away.
But before that, some good things do happen, Evan's speech at Connor's memorial gets recorded and posted and it goes viral, which encourages many other people who are troubled to reach out and get help, or to share their stories about people who got help, and this seems like a very positive thing for a lot of people, except that Evan's story is a house of cards and it's bound to come crashing down at some point. But in the meantime the other teens raise money to keep the orchard open in Connor's memory and create some kind of foundation to help troubled kids in some vague manner. Alana reveals to Evan that's she's also got Social Anxiety Disorder, but she fights it by over-achieving, joining every club in school and now running the Connor Project. So I guess those are your two options, teens, you can sit in your room on the floor, rocking back and forth or you can get out there and work like crazy to battle your anxiety. Your choice.
Alana is the smart one, she suspects that maybe Evan and Connor were never really friends to begin with, so Evan has to show her the letter and once again, he doesn't disclose that it is NOT Connor's suicide note, so now it's a lie on top of a lie. And she says that she won't share it with anyone, except then she totally does that to get the funding for the Connor Project over its goal. And then there's a terrible backlash from the internet, because that's what the internet does. Like people start wondering why Connor wrote a suicide note to his friend and not his family, which means they must be horrible people, which of course isn't true, they tried their best to reach Connor and heal him, but randos on the internet can't understand that, so along with the absent fathers, the people on social media are the real villains here. And that liar, Evan Hansen.
And Alana, for sharing that suicide note when she said that she wouldn't.
So I guess that's the lesson, stay off the internet. Just take your phone or computer and smash it into pieces. Delete Twitter and Instagram and TikTok, and even Facebook, because NOTHING good is going to come from your contact with others on social media. Everything on Instagram is fake or staged, anyway, from what I've seen, to the point where nothing is real any more, not even in an ironically funny way. Just shut the whole damn thing down, our teens will be better off for it. The problems seen in "Dear Evan Hansen" supposedly occur because people are reluctant to "reach out", but maybe this is backwards, because if you ask me, the problems are caused by the fact that everybody is "reaching out", all of social media is people "reaching out", and we had fewer problems back when nobody had this technology that allowed it.
Still, there were some massive problems here, that resulted from turning a four-hour Broadway musical into a 2 1/2 hour movie. Nine songs from the stage play had to be cut, and right there, that's sure to piss off fans of the show. They also cast the same actor who originated and developed the lead role on stage, which makes sense, except that the actor is 47 now and looks way too old to be a high-school student. (JK, he was 27.). But then if they recast the role, the fans of the show probably would have freaked out about THAT. So really, there was no way to win here except to move forward with Ben Platt and let the chips fall where they may.
And everybody here goes through so much, just to determine that "Honesty is the best policy" - well, that seems simple enough, why couldn't Evan have just told the truth at the beginning, and then he wouldn't have had to learn that lesson the hard way? And then I wouldn't have had to waste two and a half hours of MY life just to learn something that I already knew. Just saying.
I'm not even going to get into the weird "sing-speaking" that takes place during the musical numbers, because this is a common enough way to adapt a musical stage-play into a film ("Les Miserables", "Cats") but still, it's very weird. I saw this technique used in "Annette" earlier this year, and there it was super-weird. Maybe it's only sort of weird here, but it's still awkward at best.
PROGRAMMING NOTE: Despite my best efforts, I was unable to delay this film on the schedule until September, which is when I usually try to do a "back-to-school" thing. It's August, damn it, and everyone's still on break for at least another three weeks. Oh well, it's time to start your shopping for school supplies, anyway, if you want to be ready. I've got two more weeks in my staycation myself before the college I work at re-opens. But I have a feeling that time's going to just fly right by - I've been on break for 8 weeks, enough already. Anyway, I'll put this one on a list of this year's films set in high school or junior high, some from February and some from June, and we'll sort this all out together at the end of the year, OK?
Also starring Ben Platt (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Julianne Moore (last seen in "Maggie's Plan"), Kaitlyn Dever (last seen in "Cinema Verite"), Amy Adams (last seen in "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day"), Danny Pino (last heard in "Vivo"), Amandla Stenberg (last heard in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"), Colton Ryan, DeMarius Copes, Liz Kate, Zoey Luna, Isaac Powell, Marvin Leon, Hadiya Eshe, Julia Chen Myers, Gerald Caesar, Avery Bederman (last seen in "Flatliners" (2017)), Swift Rice, Tommy Kane (last seen in "Richard Jewell"), Aimee Garcia, Mariana Alvarez
RATING: 4 out of 10 scholarship essay contests
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