Peter Viney's Blog

Directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda
Written by Steven Levenson
Based on the musical by Jonathan Larson
Music by Jonathan Larson

2021

Netflix

MAIN CAST

Andrew Garfied – Jonathan Larson
Alexandra Shipp- Susan
Robin de Jeśus – Michael
Vanessa Hudgens- Karessa
Joshua Henry- Roger
Judith Light- Rosa Stevens, agent
Bradley Whitford – Stephen Sondheim

Everything you’re about to see is true …

Opening titles of the film

My fault. I only knew that it was directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda. I’ve seen Hamilton and bought the soundtrack, so that was enough for me.

Here’s the problem. I always believe that a play of a film should reveal itself without prior knowledge. I’ve stated it many times, though I will admit that I’ve been caught out a couple of times trying to follow unfamiliar Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.

Hands up. I had never heard of Jonathan Larson. I had no idea that tick, tick … BOOM was the title of Larson’s successful one man show (1991, aka Boho Days), which was also done as a three person show with the characters Karessa and Roger here. I had never even heard of Rent, Jonathan Larson’s massively successful Broadway musical which ran for twelve years, nor did I know that after nine years working as a waiter in a diner while he wrote musicals, that Larson died of a massive heart attack the night before Rent! opened in 1996. It closed in 2008. His death was horribly ironic given the title of that monologue show.

I did not know that Larson had been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, let alone Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Book of A Musical and Best Score for Rent. Rent was filmed in 2005 and apparently toured the UK. Fine. All this was news to me.

With apologies to Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Tennesee Williams et al, America’s greatest contribution to world drama has been the stage musical. It’s an area I had remained blissfully largely unaware of. Yes, my mum used to turn up the radio for extracts from all the great 1950s musicals. Our music teacher often stated that West Side Story was the greatest musical work of the 20th Century (mind you, this was a man who had barely heard of Elvis Presley). I saw the likes of Hair, Godspell, The Rocky Horror Show, Little Shop of Horrors on stage in their day, but none of them are ‘classical musicals.’ I went to see Phantom of The Opera and found it one of the most excruciating musical evenings in my life. I loathed it. Evita wasn’t quite as bad, but I still disliked it. I can’t stand Andrew Lloyd-Webber, except for when my kids were in Joseph and The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat at school.(I have also taken them to professional productions).

I really only got into classic musicals, apart from West Side Story and The Chorus Line, when we started going to Chichester Festival Theatre, who do major productions every year. This is why I had never heard of Larson or Rent.

So this is a Biopic, based around the one man tick, tick … BOOM! stage show. It concerns Larson’s attempts to write and pitch a musical, Superbia which got no further than a reading, though the great (and very recently ‘late’) Stephen Sondheim took an interest and encouraged him. We were perplexed at the format of the film, cutting between the one man stand-up show (plus band and two singers) and the back story about Superbia. We thought the story was too ‘New York’ to be true. Big cities have this ‘up yourself’ thing and NYC is the worst. London, Paris, Liverpool all try to compete. For various reasons (connected with publishing) I have no love of New York City, except that one of my grandsons in a Native New Yorker, having been born there.

So, my unusual advice: do not even try to watch this without googling Jonathan Larson first. From what I’ve read after viewing it, it’s not totally accurate nor supposed to be. So NOT Everything you’re about to see is true. Names were changed. The friend, Michael, who is HIV positive was based on his friend, but they were not in stage shows from age eight, nor was the friend an actor. However, it enhances the story.

The next thing was, I didn’t take to Andrew Garfield in the lead role. It’s clear that he has strong physical similarities with Larson, and the hair stylist did a great job in showing it. He is nominated for several Awards for his performance whatever I thought.

I’ve heard the dancing’s amazing but the music sucks.

Quote from the film

That’s about right. Except there isn’t much dancing at all (surely the choreography is what really makes a Broadway musical). There is a bit, as the girlfriend, Susan, is a dancer.

amazing – is used to so often in the screenplay that i started to count the occurrences. I wanted to chuck a thesaurus at the screen and yell ‘Find another word!’

The killer was that first I didn’t like the sub-Elton John/ Billy Joel music with its stage musical end twists at all. I thought it was dire pastiche musical fare. I thought the 5-string bass guitarist on the first song had a horrible bass sound, though she sounded fine later.

Secondly, I thought the lyrics were abysmal.

Try this:

My butcher block table
I could get used to you
Hello to shiny new parquet block floors
Waxed like a rich girl’s legs

or

Just forget Shakespeare, Beckett, Molière
That’s the play game

The singing was all good. It’s the songs, not the singers. Garfield must have used up pints of glycerine to keep his eyes wet and the tears are streaming. But a biopic of a composer has no chance if you can’t stand the music and I couldn’t.

OVERALL, for me: * BUT I think if I’d known the back story, it might have scraped ** or even ***.