I Miss Broadway

 

And that might be the reason why I enjoyed "tick, tick...BOOM."  It's been an awfully long time since I sat down for a live performance in a theater.   The last time was in February, 2020 for "Moulin Rouge."   Even though this film is quite interesting, I'm so starved that I would probably dig "Evita" with Joanne Worley.

So, this is a bio pic about Jonathan Larson who created the show "Rent," but never got to see its success because he died of some aortic issue on the night of its first preview.   Now, I myself have never seen "Rent" on stage except for a streamlined and lackluster showcase directed by Neil Patrick Harris at the Hollywood Bowl.   But I did see the movie and liked it.

Except this movie is all about Larson five years before he conceived "Rent."  When he was living in a Manhattan slum and working as a waiter at a NY diner and trying to write the next great Broadway musical.   A few years after he died, folks took some of the songs from his annals and told the story of one pre-Rent musical in another musical.   A musical of a musical of a musical.  Got that?  It's not as confusing as it sounds.   Indeed, the director is Lin-Manuel Miranda and, while I have always thought he was a big overrated, he tells this tale well.

Andrew Garfield plays Larson and I'm thinking an Oscar nomination because he acts and sings the music well.   Unlike a lot of musicals today, the lyrics in this movie are understandable and move the story along.   A lot of it sounds very Sondheim who, by the way, shows up as a character played by Bradley Whitford.  The whole point of the film is that Larson was working hard to be a success by his thirtieth birthday because, after all, Sondheim hit it big by the time he was 27.

The movie shows off well the look of 1990 and, naturally, AIDS provides the backdrop of one subplot.   This is a film where you anxiously await the next production number and there is one that features about 15 Broadway legends from Bebe Neuwirth to Joel Grey to Bernadette Peters to Chita Rivera to Brian Stokes Mitchell.   

On a subsequent viewing, I might find that I have been a little too effusive about "tick...tick...BOOM."   But it got me back to Broadway in a way and that's all I care about.

Available in movie theaters and on Netflix.

LEN'S RATING:  Three-and-a-half stars.

Dinner last night:  A long travel day so nothing really.