On Broadway, “Dear Evan Hansen” was a hit. On the big screen, it’s about to be a failure.
The latest Hollywood musical adaptation debuted Thursday at the Toronto International Film Festival before its September 24 premiere. While the stage musical, which won six Tony Awards in 2017, was praised, the preliminary reactions and reviews of the Universal film are far less kind.
“Stephen Chbosky’s film adaptation of‘ Dear Evan Hansen ’… is a total mistake,” Robert Daniels wrote in his review for RogerEbert.com. “It’s an emotionally manipulative, long mess made up of cloying songs, dull vocal performances, and even worse writing.”
“Dear Evan Hansen” is about a high school student named Evan Hansen, played by Ben Platt, who suffers from mental health issues. Her therapist has instructed her to write letters to herself to express her feelings. When Evan’s partner, Connor Murphy, steals one of these letters, Evan’s life turns upside down. Connor takes his own life and the only thing his person finds is Evan’s letter. Connor’s parents assume that Connor had written the letter for Evan and mistakenly believe that Evan was Connor’s only friend.
What begins as an innocent misunderstanding becomes a huge lie. Evan claims to be Connor’s friend and makes a secret friendship with the deceased boy, thanking Connor’s parents. Evan begins to fit into school and helps raise awareness about mental health issues through the “Connor Project,” a fundraising initiative for suicide prevention.
His deception finally unravels.
“On stage, it’s a tear-jerker: a far-fetched story of grief for adults and a generally candid examination of psychological issues that aren’t really addressed in the mainstream media to its large number of young fans,” wrote David Gordon to his critique for Theater Mania. “It erases credulity … We know it’s not real, but we follow it anyway and provide a little catharsis in the middle of the moral gray area as we buy the cast album on the way out.”
As for cinema, it’s “a different story,” Gordon wrote.
“Evan’s actions, which we neglect a bit after seeing them on Broadway because they present touches of ambiguity, are really grotesque on celluloid,” he said. “He’s a bad Machiavellian in a story where he’s written to be the hero.”
Broadway is no stranger to dark material. Shows like “The Miserables,” “Miss Saigon,” “Assassins,” “Sweeney Todd” and “Next to Normal” have explored difficult topics like death, suicide, and mental health.
Still, “Dear Evan Hansen” has always been controversial in the eyes of musical fans. There is no doubt that stage production was a huge success, earning nearly $ 250 million in ticket sales since 2016, according to data from Broadway World.
Still, many have had problems with the way he uses mental illness as a plot device and Evan’s anxiety and depression as excuses for manipulative behavior.
Platt, who reprises his role as Evan Hansen, who originated on Broadway, was praised for his singing performance. However, many critics rebelled against his casting. At 27, Platt is unable to capture the youthful innocence that would attract the public to Evan despite his questionable actions.
“If there was any chance of making this character look anything more than a monster, it was based on emphasizing his raw youth,” Alison Willmore wrote, critic of Vulture and New York magazine, on Twitter. “Which causes the casting of a man, obviously an adult, to just bend his shoulders in an almost avant-garde act of sabotage.”
The filmed version of “Dear Evan Hansen” cuts four songs, but still reaches two hours and 17 minutes, almost more than the stage version.
It’s “exaggerated and emotionless at the same time,” Karl Delossantos wrote in his review of Smash Cut. He is “insensitive to trauma and mental illness and is out of touch with reality.”
“Definitely one of the worst movie musicals ever made,” he wrote.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal is the distributor of “Dear Evan Hansen.”