“Dear Evan Hansen” Is Still Getting Dragged By Critics
Dear Evan Hansen premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month, and the reviews were mostly mixed. But since it came out today, more reviews have been released and most critics hate it as much as whoever did Ben Platt’s hair in the movie hates him (no, that’s not a wig). Dear Evan Hansen has been ripped a new one by film critics who called the movie one of the “worst movie musicals ever made” and described 27-year-old Ben Platt‘s performance as a teenager as an “obviously grown man just hunching his shoulders.” Not since Cats….
The Broadway version of DEH has been hugely successful, winning six Tonys and taking in almost $250 million in ticket sales since its debut in 2015. Deadline says that it made $800,000 in Thursday previews and is expected to bring in around $10 million at the domestic box office this weekend (DEH‘s production budget was reportedly $28 million). But that won’t be enough to take down the current #1 movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which is expected to bring in around $12 million. But if most of North America loves a messy #2 (aka a turd), then DEH may take #1. Because CNBC collected a few of the early reviews and the consensus is: Yikes. A week past and more people watched it and Rotten Tomatoes has it sitting pretty at 37% so the opinions did not improve over time.
Robert Daniels wrote for RogerEbert that it was a “total misfire… It’s an emotionally manipulative, overlong dirge composed of cloying songs, lackluster vocal performances, and even worse writing.” Vocal performances! Ben Platt’s gonna take that one to heart more than the “randos being jerks” making age cracks. David Gordon wrote for TheaterMania that:
“Onstage, it’s a tearjerker: a wrenching grief story for the grownups, and a generally frank examination of psychological issues that aren’t really addressed in mainstream media to its plethora of young fans… It strains credulity… We know it’s not real, but we go with it anyway, and it provides a nice little catharsis amid the moral gray area as we buy the cast album on the way out. [On film, it’s] a different story. Evan’s actions, which we sort of shrug off after seeing it on Broadway because they’re presented with hints of ambiguity, are truly grotesque in celluloid. He’s a Machiavellian villain in a story where he’s written to be the hero.”
MACHIAVELLIAN! Alison Willmore, a critic for Vulture and New York Magazine, also had thoughts:
DEAR EVAN HANSEN: If there were any chance of making this character look like something other than a monster, it rested on emphasizing his raw youth, which makes the casting of an OBVIOUSLY GROWN MAN JUST HUNCHING HIS SHOULDERS an act of sabotage that's near avant-garde #TIFF21 pic.twitter.com/x1zjc1aAQZ
— Alison Willmore / alisonwillmore.bsky.social (@alisonwillmore) September 10, 2021
Karl Delossantos from SmashCut dragged it for having a two-hour and seventeen-minute-long runtime even though four songs were cut from its original Broadway composition. He called it “overwrought and emotionless at the same time… [It’s] insensitive towards trauma and mental illness, and out of touch with reality… Undoubtedly one of the worst movie musicals ever made.”
And one more because I love the word “ghoulish.” From Jacob Oller for Paste Magazine:
“Dear Evan Hansen lays bare its own ghoulishness while drowning any possible complexity in laughable, hollow righteousness and the baffling aesthetic abuse of its lead.”
So Dear Evan Hansen is about a sad, weird older dude who manipulates the youth in an attempt to gain sympathy and friends. So… it’s about a sad Scott Disick then?
Pic: YouTube