For Your Spam Folder

 

Okay, I need to provide some back story before I get to the crux of this film review.

If you're even remotely aware of Broadway, you will know that "Dear Evan Hansen" was the big hot musical several years ago.   Tickets were scarce as teenagers and their parents flocked to see this story about a depressed teen surrounded by suicide and social media.   I'm convinced that you could buy Lexapro at the concession stand during intermission.

Now I didn't see the Broadway edition, but I managed to score a ticket for the national tour at Los Angeles' Ahmanson Theater.  I sat up in the balcony and, given the intimacy of the show, it didn't work for me high in the rafters.   It also didn't help that every single song sounds exactly like the last one sung.   

So, as a result of my lukewarm theater experience, I wanted to see if the film version worked better for me when you could see faces and emotions close up.  Plus the movie stars the stage's original lead, Ben Platt, who was a product of the prestigious Harvard Westlake private school.  I'm going to have a better time, right?

Wrong.

Somehow from the balcony in a theater to a stadium seat in the local cinema, the show gets lost again.   Now it's actually too much of a close-up and you see the show's warts at a microscopic level.   

And you can start with Ben Platt, now 27 and way too old-looking to be playing a high school senior.  While Platt has a terrific voice, he is an overactor to the Nth degree.   He plays with a lot of facial tics and mannerisms that are incredibly distracting.   Plus every moment is overplayed as if there is a gun being held to his head.   Of course, there's no doubt he was going to be cast in the movie version.   I mean, one of the executive producers is Marc Platt.   Connect the dots, please.

The supporting cast featuring the always welcome Julianne Moore and Amy Adans does a good job, but, still at the core of this all, is a rather depressing story which is not exactly uplifting like "Bye Bye Birdie," which was also about teens.  But, unlike in this dreary adaptation, those kids had "a lot of livin' to do."  

So, I've seen "Dear Evan Hansen" from afar and close-up and neither way worked for me.  And, oh yeah, every song seems to sound alike.   Still.

LEN'S RATING:  Two stars.

Dinner last night:  Pork with dan dan noodles from PF Chang's.