THE COLOR PURPLE

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B
Music: B+

Here I’ve spent many a year insisting any given film should be judged on its own merits, and then I go and watch this current iteration of The Color Purple directly after watching Steven Spielberg’s original 1985 adaptation.

I do not recommend doing this. It colors everything about how Blitz Bazawule’s current adaptation gets received, and it is unfair to this newer film. It can become difficult to draw the line between whether I’m not responding to it quite as well as I’d hoped, either because it is genuinely a weaker adaptation, or I simply like the earlier film better. And there is no question, I like the earlier film better.

A key difference between the two films is that the new one is a musical—not that you’d know that from its promotional campaign. Fans of Broadway will surely know it, as it may be a surprise to discover the Broadway musical adaptation is itself pretty old now: it debuted in December 2005, nearly two decades ago; ran through 2008; and then had a highly acclaimed revival run from 2015 to 2017. The latter would clearly be what then promoted this film adaptation of the stage musical, which I never had a chance to see but can easily imagine it being a fantastic, powerful experience.

The sticking point for me here is that storytelling works differently in different mediums. This is something too many directors forget when adapting books into films, and the same goes for adapting stage plays into films. Spielberg’s movie covers a great many years, and really lets the story simmer within each phase of Celie’s life, making each key occurrence all the more poignant. The Color Purple, the movie musical, covers just as much ground, but has a run time thirteen minutes shorter than the previous film, and it makes so much time for music sequences that the rest of the story, simply by definition, gets truncated and rushed through.

The actors portraying Celie and her sister Nettie as children (Phylicia Pearl Mpasi and Halle Bailey, respectively) don’t even look that young, thereby undermining the very point of their portrayals. Nettie then does not get near enough screen time, regardless of who is portraying her, which undercuts the intended emotion of the sisters’ eventual reunion after many years of separation. We hardly get to know Nettie here, and so have less reason to care.

All that said, there remains a lot to like about this Color Purple—particularly, somewhat ironically, the music. Your mileage may vary as to whether it’s worth trading effective storytelling for really good music, but at least when the music numbers are being performed, you’re happy to be there. We’ll just set aside how incongruous it feels to have characters breaking out into rapturous song in the middle of a story like this, which features fairly regular domestic abuse.

Furthermore, the actors can’t be blamed for what they’ve been given to work with, and The Color Purple is objectively well cast: Fantasia Barrino is effective as the older Celie (even if her incredibly distinctive voice bears no resemblance to Phylicia Pearl Mpasi’s). Colman Domingo is uniquely sinister as Mister, the man Celie is forced to marry; Taraji P. Henson is electric as Shug Avery, the blues singer with whom both Mister and Celie are enamored; H.E.R. is arguably underused as Squeak; and Danielle Brooks absolutely justifies her Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Sofia, belligerent wife of Mister’s son, Harpo (Corey Hawkins).

Of course, here is where a generational divide creeps in again: none of these current actors can’t really compete with the indelible 1985 performances by then-newcomer Whoopi Goldberg as Celie; Danny Glover as Mister; or Oprah Winfrey as Sofia. The more relevant question might be how many people among 2023 audiences know or care about the 1985 film—they’ll certainly know who both Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey are, if not Danny Glover. The one performer who truly improves on the character in the current iteration is Taraji P. Henson, who truly lights up the screen.

There’s also the valid argument that Steven Spielberg, a rich White guy, was an inappropriate choice for directing this particular story—something he was actually insecure about even in 1985, only taking the gig once Quincy Jones convinced him to. Production of films about Black people plays out in this way less and less anymore, and it’s only right that a Black director should take on this film. It’s somewhat of a bummer, then, that a Black director could not have been given the chance to make just as good a film in 1985, and that the Black director who did direct the film in 2023 did a fine job but still not quite as good.

I do rather wish now that I could have watched 2023 The Color Purple in a bit more of a vacuum, without the 1985 film so fresh in my memory, from literally minutes before. I might not be quite as hard on it, although I feel pretty strongly I still would have given it the same rating, given its strong performances among tonal inconsistencies.

It’s hard to be as timid as the story really calls for when you’re regularly bursting into song.

Overall: B

MEAN GIRLS

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B
Music: B

When I saw the original Mean Girls in 2004, I felt even then that it was overrated, an ultimately unsuccessful attempt at being the 21st-century contemporary answer to the 1988 cult classic Heathers. I felt at the time that Heathers was a far superior comedy, with biting humor that Mean Girls lacked. Ironically, not even Heathers has aged especially well from a 2024 vantage point—and it should be noted that Mean Girls was released 16 years after it; this new iteration of Mean Girls is coming out a solid twenty years after the first one. (The Broadway musical adaptation of the 2004 film, on which this new film is based, had its first production in 2017—thirteen years after the movie. Are you following all of this?) These days, surely far fewer viewers of Mean Girls have any idea what Heathers even was than viewers in 2004 did, making Heathers far less relevant to this movie than it was to the 2004 movie.

It’s been so long since even the 2004 film, all that truly matters now is how well the current film works, within a 2024 framework. And I’d say it works . . . fine. I enjoyed this one more than I seemed to enjoy the first film twenty years ago, but not by a wide margin.

I was relieved to find the music catchy, if relatively forgettable. There has been a bit of press about the promotion of all the musicals released in the past couple of months, most notably Wonka, The Color Purple, and Mean Girls: the trailers for all of them were edited so that it was not clear in any of their cases that they are actually musicals. Are promoters afraid audiences aren’t interested in musicals? If so, why they hell are they making them at all? And god knows, Wonka was a genuine hit—with utterly forgettable music throughout—and the 1 p.m. Saturday screening of Mean Girls I went to was far from sold out, but still had a surprisingly robust crowd at it.

I’ll say this: I had a good time, and I can’t imagine ever going out of my way to see Mean Girls, the musical adaptation of a Broadway adaptation of a movie adaptation of a novel originally called Queen Bees and the Wannabees, again. The 2004 film was famously co-written by, and co-starred, Tina Fey, whose profile was much higher at the time than it is today; she also wrote the book (though not the lyrics) for the Broadway musical, and gets sole writing credit for this new film adaptation, while appearing, yet again, as one of the teachers at North Shore High School. To Fey’s credit, the script is updated well to 2020s sensibilities, if possibly a little off the mark when it comes to how high school teenagers actually behave toward each other anymore.

Last year’s Jennifer Lawrence comedy No Hard Feelings felt a little closer to the mark with this, with high school kids much more sophisticated than they used to be, and far less tolerant of bigoted or sexist behavior—granted, these things can easily still be very regional, and bear in mind I have not personally spent any real time inside a high school myself in a solid thirty years. Nevertheless, there is a thematic undercurrent to this Mean Girls which, being based on something twenty years old, feels a bit dated.

I still have a basic complaint about it: Mean Girls doesn’t have mean enough girls in it. It might be more appropriately called Girls Who Hurt Each Other’s Feelings, which is, just as before, the basic, simplistic lesson: girls can be uniquely catty with each other, they fight, and the ones with a genuine conscience ultimately make up.

Fair enough, I suppose, especially for audiences who are, let’s say, adolescents. On the upside, Mean Girls is cast with exceptional performers, with Angourie Rice (first seen as the 13-year-old in The Nice Guys; later the young-adult daughter in the HBO limited series Mare of Easttown) in the part of Cady Heron. Rice fits comfortably in the role of both awkward newcomer and one of the so-called “Plastics,” the clique of vapid popular girls. Reneé Rapp is especially effective as Regina George, the thoughtless leader of the Plastics, her musical numbers consistently the best vocal performances in the film.

Among Regina’s two main acolytes, I have more mixed feelings about casting a brown woman (Avantika) as the pointedly dumb one. In fact, the supporting cast is fairly diverse, including Auli’i Cravalho (who had voiced the title character in the Disney film Moana) and Jaquel Spivey as the queer kids who first befriend Cady at her new school. But, there’s no getting around the fact that casting the two leads as White girls was no accident, and thus centers Whiteness with all this array of other, diverse characters revolving around them. I love Tina Fey, but this does seem to be a lasting blind spot with her. (One might argue that this particular story doesn’t work the same way if the leads aren’t White, but I would not accept that argument.) Taken in isolation, Mean Girls could be given a pass on this front; the issue is that it’s part of a long established pattern, which not enough people talk about.

Casting considerations aside, Mean Girls is relatively harmless, a pleasant enough time at the movies, a fairly successful capitalization on nostalgia for something that was never that special in the first place. As with its predecessor, Mean Girls comfortably sidesteps a whole lot of potential, leaving us with both a sense of what it could have been, and a satisfying experience of something hovering just one or two steps above mediocrity.

I want to see the movie about the supporting players.

Overall: B

WONKA

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-
Special Effects: C+
Music: B-

An argument has been made that, well, Wonka is for kids, and kids deserve movies too, right? Well, here’ s my counter-argument: the likelihood that kids will indeed enjoy Wonka notwithstanding, there are still kids’ movies out there that are actually good. This is not one of them.

Mind you, it’s not terrible either. But that’s just the thing: there is a Roald Dahl legacy to live up to here, as well as a Gene Wilder legacy, and Wonka falls short on both counts. This movie doesn’t even live up to the 2005 Tim Burton film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I still insist was wonderful, I don’t care how many haters there are out there. Of course, that’s not to say any of these films have held up to the truly classic, enduring 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory—which, astonishingly, was rated G—but, on the flip side, kids today are neither likely to know anything about that film, nor have much interest in watching it if they do. It would be the equivalent of me having any interest in a film released in 1934 when I was ten years old.

The bummer of it right now is, if you want to take your kids to the movies, Wonka is nearly the only option. The only others in multiplexes right now are the animated films Migration and Wish, which are both getting worse responses than Wonka. Wonka, at the very least, is sprinkled with several genuinely charming moments, of the sort that are a signature of director Paul King. (King directed both of the Paddington films, and both of them are far superior to this.) If you’re one of the adults taking kids to this film, well, you’re kind of shit out of luck.

And, to be fair, it’s not just that it doesn’t live up to Roald Dah’s cinematic legacy. From the opening scenes, in which Timothée Chalamet dances with a bunch of people holding “Wonka” umbrellas behind him, the choreography middling and the lyrics unmemorable, I thought: Oh. This isn’t going to be great. The sequence ends with Wonka getting charged a fee for daydreaming, a brief gag that works better than any of the extended theatrics that came before it.

My biggest issue with Wonka is the visual effects. This movie was made on a budget of $125 million, and I just have to wonder: where the hell was the money spent? Just on the talent? Chalamet’s $9 million paycheck is objectively ridiclous, and yet even that is but a fraction of that budget. Once again, the shockingly good Godzilla Minus One comes to mind—that film was made for $15 million, and it looks far better than this.

Wonka is appropriately color saturated for a film that is clearly presented as a musical fantasia. And yet, a huge amount of it is rendered in subpar CGI, giving it a far more artificial look than films about the same character released 52 and 18 years ago. I was especially mystified by the one Oompa Loompa, whose movements are noticeably jerky-jerky. How can a film this expensive to make look so bad? To give credit where credit is due, Hugh Grant imbues the Oompa Loompa with more personality than any single other character in the film, which almost makes up for the bad visual effects. Almost. (Side note: it’s also in this film’s favor that the Oompa Loompa is given full autonomy, and never becomes the stand-in for slave labor that the Oompa Loompas were in either of the previous films.)

To be fair, Timothée Chalamet, an objectively great actor, does his best with what he has to work with. As do a bevy of other big names who make up the supporting cast: Olivia Colman as Mrs. Scrubitt, the innkeeper who tricks Wonka into indentured servitude; Keegan-Michael Key as the Chief of Police, so easily bribed by Wonka’s rival chocolatiers with chocolate that he gains a ton of weight over the course of the film (and I find the idea that this is “fat shaming” to be debatable at best); Rowan Atkinson as Father Julius, also easily bribed with chocolate; Jim Carter as Abacus Crunch, one of the other indentured servants slaving away in the inn basement; even Sally Hawkins, the mom in the Paddington movies and here playing Wonka’s mother in a few flashback sequences. In none of these cases does the actor get as much to chew on as they deserve, in spite of Olivia Colman’s extensive screen time as one of many villains, but the one who most directly steals Wonka’s luck away from him.

Fundamentally, Paul King seems to have missed the point entirely, of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which is about a possibly-corrupt, borderline sociopathic chocolatier weeding out the one good little kid in a group of spoiled brats. The only way Wonka’s return to that character’s story, particularly as a prequel, would make sense would be for Willy to learn the same kind of lesson himself as a youngster. Instead, Wonka is presented as pure hearted, and constantly taken advantage of by the adults around him who are the spoiled brats.

There is only one genuine kid in this movie, Calah Lane, who plays Noodle, also toiling away indefinitely in the inn basement. Lane is quite lovely, actually, one of the best things about Wonka, with onscreen charisma that helps keeps the proceedings watchable. But Noodle and Willy are both similarly pure of heart, dealing with heightened, standard kids-movie villains. Willy Wonka is supposed to be backed with subtext, and Wonka, generally pleasant as it is to watch, is all text.

All of that brings us back to this: kids will have a great time. The group of kids in the row of seats behind me, who did not shut the fuck up the entire film, certainly did. Surely they neither know nor care anything about Gene Wilder’s or even Johnny Depp’s iterations of Willy Wonka. For them, there is only Timothée Chalamet. But here’s the key difference: none of those kids are going to grow up regarding this as an unfortgettable classic from their childhoods. It’s just another passable outing at the movies, and in the context of its cinematic legacy, that’s a real shame.

Hugh Grant’s ample charms can’t elevate a middling achievement.

Overall: B-

DICKS: THE MUSICAL

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+
Music: B-

Dicks: The Musical is definitely the filthiest rip-off of The Parent Trap you’ll ever see. Strangely, even as it goes further with certain taboos than any other movie ever has—this is very much the point—I’m sort of disappointed it wasn’t any filthier. Get this: there aren’t any actual dicks in this movie. No genuine full-frontal nudity whatsoever! This feels like false advertising. If it weren’t for the endless amount of times someone says “fuck,” this movie might have gotten a PG-13 rating. Okay, probably not.

One of the many meta gags about this movie is that the “Dicks” of the title actually refers to the personalities of the two leads, Craig and Trevor (Josh Sharp an Aaron Jackson, on whose original 2015 UCB show this is based; they are also co-writers of the script). We’re told in opening title cards how “brave” it is that these two gay actors are playing straight characters—who are, you guessed it, both dicks. They display such a camp level of narcissism and misogyny that it circles all the way back around to delightful.

There was a moment early on in Dicks: The Musical when I was finding it so genuinely hilarious, I actually thought to myself: Is this the 21st century’s answer to AIRPLANE? Alas. If only.

As Craig and Trevor discover they are “identical twins” (even though the two actors don’t look anything alike aside from being a cuple of brown haired White guys) and hatch a plan to trick their estranged and bonkers parents (Megan Mullaly and Nathan Lane, milking this movie for all the moderate value that it’s worth), the potential is there. There’s a scene with Nathan Lane and his two janky puppet “Sewer Boys” that had me laughing so hard I was in tears. You’ll never look at a bag of ham the same way again.

And then there’s Megan Thee Stallion, cast as the CEO of the company both Craig and Trevor also discover they work for, and are tied for the top sellers of parts for autonomous vacuum cleaners. Getting such a wildly random name into this movie is fun, right? She even gets a pretty elaborate song and dance number. The problem is that her song is merely slightly amusing, and doesn’t elicit any genuine laughs, and in that failure kind of stops the momentum of bonkers hilarity dead in its tracks. And although there are certainly genuinely funny moments after that, Dicks: The Musical never fully recovers.

Megan Thee Stallion’s song isn’t even the only issue, musically—it’s just the best example, of how a movie like this works far better if the music is as exceptional as its humor. The Book of Mormon, for example, has much greater success at this. (To be fair, The Book of Mormon has never been adapted to film, and there’s no guarantee that it would adapt well.)

Dicks the Musical also features a pointedly flamboyant Bowen Yang as God, with mixed but fun results. I won’t spoil the specific depravity “God” winds up fully endorsing, which I have mixed feelings about, even as irreverent comedy. I don’t even necessarily take issue with it as a comic idea, but rather the manner in which it’s presented here. It’s simply not as funny as Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson want us to think it is.

Megan Mullaly’s vagina falling off and running away, though? We don’t even see that happen, we get to watch Aaron Jackson as Trevor describing it to his brother—and it’s fucking hilarious. And that’s the thing: I laughed a lot at Dicks: The Musical. Unfortunately, like way too many other comedies, it’s front-loaded with the funniest gags, which means it starts to lose steam about halfway through. And this movie is all of 86 minutes long.

The performers across the board are clearly having a great time, and that alone keeps the filthy depravity a fun time, punctuated with some great outtakes during the end credits. It just moves from a movie that feels wildly underrated at first, to one where you consider its mixed reviews and think: that tracks.

You won’t see any actual dicks but you’ll see some guys singing about them.

Overall: B

MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH MARRIAGE

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+
Animation: B+
Music: B

According to writer-director Signe Baumane, at a festival screening of My Love Affair with Marriage, a scientist in the audience stood up and declared it the most scientifically accurate film they had ever seen. What a ringing endorsement! From a solitary voice that by definition does not represent scientific consensus! As reported by the filmmaker!

I don’t mean to sound flippant. At the post-screening Q&A I was at, hearing this bit of information, in the moment, I was genuinely impressed. And: for the most part, the surprisingly extensive bits about the physiology and biology behind behaviors and emotions related to romance—in an animated musical—comes across as plausibly accurate. It even features “Biology” as an incredibly charming animated character, narrating these many interludes, a cell serving as the character’s face. The only part of this that I bumped on was a reference to dueling amounts of hormones during fetal development as explanation for a man turning out to be a cross dresser, which struck me as a gross oversimplifcation, of science that is not even fully settled.

To be fair, how to handle such a concept in the context of My Love Affair with Marriage is tricky. Baumane, a Latvian-born filmmaker who is using animation to tell a largely autobiographical story here, actually did marry a Swedish man (here voiced by Matthew Modine) who revealed he was a cross-dresser after they separated—and, this was her second marriage.

And it really should be not only noted, but stressed: this is a story about much more than that, though it’s a vital chapter in the story of the central character here, Zelma (Dagmara Dominczyk). We follow Zelma not just from birth, but conception (or Inception, as the “Prologue” is titled), learn how many of her behaviors and peronality traits are traced back genetically, even to the childhood traumas of her parents. We see that she is born on the Soviet island of Sakhalin, just north of Japan; and soon thereafter moves all the way west to Latvia, where she gets a rude awakening from classmates in regards to gender norms and expectations.

We watch Zelma grow up, learn through culture to lose her confidence as a woman, gain some of it back by selling art, and then eventually get emotionally blackmailed, manipulated and abused by her first husband (Cameron Monaghan). Through all of it, we switch over to “Biology” using neural pathways and chemical reactions to explain Zelma’s decisions and behaviors, a completely objective backdrop for otherwise subjective ideas and choices. What’s happening to our brain when we fall in love? When we have sex? When we kiss? When we get depressed? When we get defensive? When we fall out of love, or fall into resentments? “Biology,” the character (Michele Pawk), may not cover absolutely everything, but she’s memorably comprehensive.

This tension between biological imperatives and erratic behaviors is what really makes the movie, My Love Affair with Marriage, for me. Baumane says she spent a year studying the science, and it really pays off.

The animation style is peculiar, with what often look like photo backdrops onto which are superimposed the animated characters, themselves animated at a low number of frames per minute. I must admit that I wasn’t much into it at first, but I got past it quickly—and the Biology interludes are especially well animated, sort of like animated films from high school health class with nuanced intellectualization. I was not quite as taken with the musical interludes, most of them sung by a trio of “Mythology Sirens,” a few of which are catchy. The best song, with lyrics by Signe Baumane and performed by Storm Large, plays over the end credits.

In the end, I was very taken with My Love Affair with Marriage—and I wish I could tell you how or where to see it. I happened to see a one-time encore showing after it was at the Seattle International Film Festival six months ago; I’m not aware of it having gotten a wide release domestically. My fervent hope is that it winds up on a streamer sooner than later, for more people to discover. This film is the epitome of specificity translating to universal relatability.

Biology illustrates how feelings and behaviors are rooted in things more complex than they might seem.

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: NEPTUNE FROST

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B+

Neptune Frost is an Afro-futurist musical directed by New York-based slam poet Saul William and his wife Anisia Uzeyman, and it is dense with African musical roots, metaphor, and meaning—in a way that it’s practically impossible for me not to describe it in an embarrassingly “whitey-white” way. I mean, just moments ago I mentioned to a friend that calling this movie a “musical” is kind of a technicality, at least in terms of traditional American perceptions of musicals: “It’s all African drum stuff,” I said. Is that “whitey-white” enough for you? I think it qualifies. Also, of course, it’s a lot more nuanced than that. It fuses traditional African drum beats with an infectious kind of industrial electronica, in a way that made me wish its soundtrack were a lot more accessible than it seems to be.

I will freely admit that I found Neptune Frost largely difficult to follow, much of it like an extended, abstract music video. I’ve never done this before, but I think we can all live with it: I’m just going to let Deadline do the synopsis work for me:

The film takes place amid the hilltops of Burundi, where a collective of computer hackers emerges from a mining community, the result of a romance between a miner and an intersex runaway.

There’s even a lot more than that going on, with narrative threads connected to everything from colonialism to worldwide internet connectivity. This is a particularly unusual movie with one of its primary characters being intersex—a biological condition that, depending on the person, may not even qualify as on the “queerness” spectrum, with no representation among the letters GLBT, although it clearly fits into the sex and gender conversation.

This character’s name is Neptune (hence the title; Frost is a bird—what the bird signifies, I was unable to discern), and Neptune encounters many other characters with poetic names: “Memory,” “Innocent,” “Psychology,” even “Matalusa” which eventually gets spelled out as Martyr Loser. Neptune encounters each of these other people in turn on a kind of dreamscape version of Homer’s The Odyssey. Except eventually Neptune finds the aforementioned hacker collective, and Neptune’s arrival becomes the power source for the collective’s many computer parts and motherboards. I took it to be a metaphor for powering community, but I have no idea how close to the mark I am there.

Because, indeed, most of Neptune Frost is abstract, in a way that leaves the viewer little choice but to surrender to its well-rendered, complex and mysterious quasi-technological universe. There is one line of dialogue so refreshingly concrete that I had to write it down: after asking if gender is “so crucial” in someone’s desire for intimacy (for many people, indeed it is), this follow-up question is asked: “Are you justified in attacking strangers who do not fulfill your unwarranted desires?” A great question that needs to be asked of many, but also, not the primary point of Netptune Frost—but a crucial component of it.

These lines of dialogue are after a sequence in which the ironically named “Innocent” attempts to seduce Neptune, but is shaken by unexpected anatomy. This but one of many threads in a vast tapestry of beats and vocalizations, and occasional, subtle but seamlessly integrated digital effects. Neptune Frost is a visual accomplishment that belies its clearly limited budget. I may not have been able to understand its many narrative threads to their fullest, but the talents of its makers are indisputable, and I would still recommend it on the strength of its visuals and sounds alone.

Just the abstract Afro-futurist musical you were looking for.

Overall: B+

WEST SIDE STORY

Directing: A-
Acting: B+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-
Music: A-

When Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise’s West Side Story was released in 1961, itself an adaptation of an original 1957 Broadway play by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, it was a bona fide sensation. This mid-1950s musical set in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and inspired by William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, was the second-highest grossing movie of 1961 (to be fair, making less than half the gross of that year’s #1 movie, 101 Dalmatians), grossing $43.7 million—the equivalent of $406 million today. It then went on to be nominated for eleven Academy Awards, and it won ten of them.

In the context of its time, the West Side Story of sixty years ago was a perfect movie in the eyes of many—an audience of people who wouldn’t have any concept of what “brownface” even is, let alone have any issue with it. Only over time, over decades of long-established “classic movie musical” status, have people grown to understand its deeply problematic elements. This same movie that won Rita Moreno the first Oscar given to a Hispanic woman also cast white actors, notably Natalie Wood in the co-lead part of Maria, as Latin characters.

Say things like “it was a different time” all you want, watching movies like that is increasingly hard to swallow. Enter Steven Spielberg, who reportedly loved this movie since childhood, to offer the remake everyone thought no one needed, only to prove he could update it for modern audiences in nearly all the right ways. His 2021 West Side Story, which is less a remake of the 1961 film than a new adaptation of the original play—with some of the censored lines that didn’t make it into the 1961 version reinstated. (Conversely, some of the harsher lines about Puerto Rico in the “America” number are toned down a bit.)

There are some astonishing things about this version of West Side Story, not the least of which is the casting of Rita Moreno, who played Anita in 1961, as a replacement for the “Doc” drug store owner character. Here she is his widow. This is the only truly overt nod to the 1961 movie as opposed to the original play, and it’s amazing to think that Moreno was 30 years old in 1961. Consider that 1961 was sixty years ago. Just this past weekend, Moreno turned ninety. Granted, this movie that was originally supposed to be released a year ago but was postponed due to the pandemic, was shot in 2019, so onscreen Moreno is 88. Still a jaw droppingly vivacious screen presence.

So, let’s address the issue of Ansel Elgort in the co-lead part of Tony—something that has become an unfortunate stain on the legacy of a West Side Story clearly meant to correct problematic issues. Given Elgort’s multiple credible allegations of sexual assault, that leaves this West Side Story problematic in its own right, and I must admit: this knowledge marred my experience of the movie. And I thoroughly enjoyed it! But, I was also regularly distracted by the very presence of Elgort onscreen.

Previous to this, I thought of Elgort the actor as . . . fine. He was competent but bland and forgettable in The Fault in Our Stars (2016); he was serviceable in the otherwise thrilling Baby Driver (2017)—a movie which, incidentally, costarred fellow douche Kevin Spacey. The point is, Elgort was never quite poised for movie stardom. Some may have assumed West Side Story might put him over the edge—again, he is serviceable, and his singing is actually surprisingly good—but it’s pretty clear now that is never going to happen.

It’s hard to fault the rest of the people involved in the film, however—in a highly collaborative medium. As already noted, shooting took place in 2019; the allegations broke in 2020; Elgort’s deflections have been fairly unconvincing, but this all happened after the film was done. It’s not like he could be recast. The closest I can get to putting a positive spin on this is to note that all the bronzer used in the 1961 film—even on the Latino actors!—is right there onscreen, whereas this issue with Spielberg’s film is behind the scenes. If you can’t stomach seeing this movie after learning about Ansel Elgort, I absolutely won’t fault you for that. But if you can take the film at face value, and judge it solely as Spielberg’s vision of a genuinely improved film experience, you might just find yourself wowed by it.

It should be noted that this West Side Story has an incredible ensemble cast, with Ariana DeBose every bit as good as Rita Moreno ever was in the part of Anita; a truly dynamic screen presence in David Alvarez as Bernardo; a uniquely charismatic screen presence in Mike Faist as Riff; and an essence of effortless vocal purity in Rachel Zegler as Maria.

And then there’s the part of Anybodys, portrayed as a tomboy in the 1961 film (and, presumably, in the original play), but strongly suggested—though never explicitly stated—to be a trans boy as depicted by Iris Menas in the Spielberg film. This also certainly gets into deeply sensitive territory, but, all things considered, both Spielberg and Menas handle this character incredibly well. This could have been a choice that crashed and burned, and instead the part, which gets a slightly expanded character arc (as does that of Chino, a pivotal part with no real dimension in 1961), is handled with nuance and humanity. That said, I can’t quite decide how I feel about the decision to keep the “my brother wears a dress” line in the “Gee Officer Krupke” number, except to say that it fits with the characterization of the Jets as insensitive dipshits.

Most importantly. Spielberg shoots West Side Story in a way that infuses it with crackling energy, employing cinematography that makes its viewing an invigorating experience. This is the case from the opening shot, which trades the 1961 version’s famous overhead shots of Manhattan skyscrapers with an overhead tracking crane shot of blocks of rubble recently bulldozed, immediately and pointedly contextualizing the story with gentrification. A few Black characters are used briefly at times throughout the movie, clearly in the service of this point. The story just happens to be about rival gangs that are either white or Puerto Rican.

And yes, there is still ample choreography—one of the things that made me love this movie, actually. Once enough decades passed to render West Side Story dated, some have made fun of the seemingly effeminate nature of “tough guy” gangs incorporating ballet moves into their repertoire. Well, they kind of still do that here, but Justin Peck’s choreography is updated just enough to accept the way they move as a part of a modern movie musical. Choreography isn’t just for dancing, though (although there are multiple dance numbers here that are great, especially during “America”). It’s also for fight scenes, and there are moments in this adaptation that are surprisingly violent. The opening sequences marry the two, in fact: introductions of the Jets and the Sharks have them dancing aggressively through the streets, until we wind up at a beautifully shot mural of the Puerto Rican flag, which the Jets then begin defacing with paint from cans cleverly picked up during all that previously choreographed movement.

The great thing about West Side Story is now it all fits together in the end. This is the kind of movie that pulls you along as what seems like simply decent entertainment for a while, only for things to click into place in a way that systematically reveals how expertly constructed it was all along. To say that film adaptations of stage plays, even musicals, are hit and miss is an understatement. But, how much I thoroughly enjoyed this one can’t be overstated.

Just think of it as Spielberg’s best work in years.

tick, tick ... BOOM!

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-
Music: A-

Point of clarification! Is it tick, tick… BOOM! or is it tick, tick… Boom! or is it Tick, Tick… Boom! or is it Tick, Tick… BOOM! People all over the place are capitalizing it in all different ways and it’s kind of driving me crazy. Well, the original Broadway program wrote it as tick, tick… BOOM! So does the movie poster, so, thank god we got that cleared up!

Point of presentation: tick, tick… BOOM! is semi-autobiographical, produced originally by Jonathan Larson as a solo work in 1990, later produced as a Broadway musical in 2001, after his game-changing RENT premiered in 1996. Spoiler alert, Larson died of an aortic dissection in 1996 at the age of 35, the day of RENT’s first Off Broadway preview performance. The film adaptation, which has been streaming on Netflix for two weeks now, makes his death clear from the very start, and considering it’s also a matter of historical record, it’s not exactly a crucial plot point. It is relevant, however—and I must confess I never knew anything about the Broadway show before the release of this film, which is also Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial debut. He proves to be well suited to it.

As usual, all I can personally speak to is how well it works as a movie, on its own terms. Audiences intimately familiar with Broadway productions may well have arguments otherwise, but I found tick, tick… BOOM! to be an invigorating watch, with infectiously catchy music and impressively structured lyrics. Perhaps the only thing that keeps it from reaching the same excellence as the 2005 film adaptation of RENT is simply that RENT redefined what theater could be. They can’t all manage the same such achievements, although as a movie experience, tick tick… BOOM! still comes close. Even though it’s increasingly awkward having to type out that objectively odd title.

And, to be fair, RENT changed what theater could be, but it had no such effect on film. It was simply translated well to film, granting it a far greater audience—the same thing being done for tick, tick… BOOM!, in this case largely because it’s streaming. The two stories do make great companion pieces, both of them far superior works to the first musical the semi-fictional Jonathan Larson creates, the play-within-a-play of sorts in tick, tick… BOOM! It sure has fun music, though, and I loved hearing every song he wrote for it, which, by extension, he also wrote for tick, tick… BOOM!

I kind of couldn’t get enough of the music in this movie, actually. From start to finish, every song hits its mark, none of them a miss. This movie wouldn’t be half as compelling without it, even though Andrew Garfield is an inspired casting choice for the lead. This may be the first time I truly saw Garfield lose himself in a part; watching him in this movie, I only ever saw Jonathan Larson, never Andrew Garfield. He has a vivacious spirit not seen in any of his other performances, an almost destructive optimism about him, the kind of attitude that struggling artists must have in order to find success, however long it takes. Furthermore, once you learn that Garfield never had any vocal training prior to this but took lessons for a year before production started, his vocal delivery is particularly impressive. This may because I have had no formal training myself, but to my ear he sounded every bit as good as any of the other professional singers in the cast around him.

The layered, meta element in tick, tick… BOOM! is tricky but well executed, by both Miranda’s direction and the screenplay by Steven Levenson, who does a much better job here than he did with the hot mess that was Dear Evan Hansen. (In his defense, that one was a hot mess before it was adapted from the stage.) In sharp contrast to many decades of the twentieth century, for maybe the past thirty years or so movie musicals have been very hit and miss with both commercial and artistic success. An unusual number of movie musicals are being released in 2021, and although still not all of them are great, the batting average has been surprisingly good. tick, tick… BOOM! is one of the good ones, the kind of movie that is easy to recommend as entertainment for eclectic audiences.

And this is in spite of the specificity of its subject matter, which, much like RENT, is set at the peak of the AIDS crisis—in this case, 1990, the year Jonathan Larson turned 30, something he does a bit of hand wringing about. Actually he does some irresistibly catchy singing about it. As it happened, Larson was straight—his strained relationship with girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Shipp) due to his obsession with his work is a key plot point—but his best friend Michael (Robin de Jesus) is gay, their existence in the world of theater and their many mutual friends thus being very connected to the death toll in that particular pandemic. When Jonathan’s agent (played by Judith Light, a delight as always) offers him some advice to move on to the next play and “write what you know,” we know that ultimately that advice will result in both tick, tick… BOOM! and RENT.

As a gay man with a straight best friend myself, I found something very comfortable and comforting about the depiction of such a relationship in film—and not just that it exists, but that it’s in a film set thirty years ago. I was fourteen years old in 1990, and in my world at the time, it seemed impossible that I could be gay and have any straight men even like me, let alone be close friends. It’s just a lovely thing to see that I was being proved wrong, even then, without realizing it. Even now we don’t see relationships like this in movies or TV very often, so it’s another of many things that make tick, tick… BOOM! a treat.

Andrew Garfield wows in a delightful and moving movie musical.

Overall: B+

DEAR EVAN HANSEN

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: C-
Cinematography: B-
Editing: C+
Music: A-

Dear Evan Hansen is the perfect movie for people with no critical thinking skills. Anyone who sees this movie and then wonders how the Broadway play on which it’s based was a huge success has evidently never met your average mainstream audience. People want to be entertained, and hear great music, and to be moved to tears, and this movie offers all of those things. I mean, I cried too.

So what’s the problem? Well, nothing, if you have no interest in looking beyond superficial concerns. I guess I won’t begrudge you that, if it’s the choice you make. More power to you, I guess. But while the characters in this story are supposedly working through their grief and learning to conquer their anxieties, it's all based on an endless cascade of lies, and people doing what are bizarrely never quite presented as such but are objectively horrible things to each other. One would not be too far off the mark to call this movie unhinged.

Except, it's never presented that way, nor does it ever really feel that way. You only get there when you stop to think critically about what's going on. In the meantime, you're being moved by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul's original music and wowed by Ben Platt's voice.

But, okay, let's back up a little and talk about Ben Platt, because there are actually a lot of criticisms of this movie that I feel are unfair. As in, although Platt originated the title role of a 16-year-old when he himself was 21, he still plays the same role in the film adaptation at the age of 27. To that I say, who cares? If we can literally celebrate 32-year-olds playing middle schoolers in the Hulu series Pen15, why is this such a big deal? People are acting like Ben Platt as a "grown man" in this film is outrageous casting, and I did not find it the least bit distracting. Furthermore, Kaitlyn Dever as Evan's love interest Zoe is 24 years old in the part herself, and that fact is getting far less press.

Honestly, the performances matter far more to me than the actual ages of the actors, as long as they're still young. (Although to be fair, in the hands of the right director, even someone far older in the part could have worked. It's all in the handling.) And while some are saying Platt is overdoing his performance, the character of Evan is someone I relate to on a viscerally personal level. So much of his high school experience, his social anxieties, brought me right back to my own remarkably similar experiences at the same age. He takes many medications for these things, as does at least one other student he gets to know a little, and I found myself wondering what medications I might have been given had I been born twenty years later.

Well, maybe none. Evan's disorders are often manifest in very physiological ways, and my own problems in my youth, rooted in childhood traumas, were better served with therapy than with medication. And this actually is relevant to the film, because that brings me to the other truly legitimate criticism of Dear Evan Hansen, which is how it characterizes mental illness. Every "breakthrough" Evan makes is as a result of bizarrely fated circumstances, and his use of medication is presented as one of the many things that otherize him rather than as a genuine solution to any of his struggles.

Then there's Connor. I haven't even mentioned him yet! He's the emotionally unstable classmate who committed suicide after randomly signing the cast on Evan's arm, with a letter Evan wrote to himself still on his person after he snatched it from a school printer Evan printed it to. It convinces Connor's parents (Amy Adams and Danny Pino, both great in what are ultimately thankless parts) that Connor had friends after all, and in his social panic Evan goes along with their assumptions, creating a fantasy relationship he had with Connor to make Cynthia and Larry feel better in their grief.

And I kept thinking about Connor, over and over, through the vast majority of Dear Evan Hansen—he's the character completely swept aside, in favor of some fantasy construction of him. With hints of his true personality sprinkled in here and there, perhaps director Stephen Chbosky felt that we were given a full picture of who he really was. But, Connor is really given the shaft here, all the "real" details about him amounting to nothing more than a ghost, in favor of an exponentially larger amount of time spent on the fiction of him. Evan convinces Connor’s parents that he had some secret life of fulfilling friendship, that he was capable of real connection with his peers. Except we never see that actually happen, because it all exists as a deceitful construction built by Evan. The closest we ever get is a brief home video of Connor singing and playing guitar. But, as far as we know, Connor really was the awful shit he seemed to be in the few scenes we see of him when he was still alive. Either way, Connor is never given fair representation in this movie.

And sure, the movie is about Evan rather than Connor, except Evan uses Connor to make it so, and in the process quite elaborately emotionally manipulates an entire family. Evan's own single mother is played by Julianne Moore, easily the best thing in this movie, unfortunately absent too much of the time because she is an overworked nurse constantly taking on extra shifts. She even gets one song near the end, and it's a moment at which tissues should be handy.

I do have to wonder, would Dear Evan Hansen work even as well as it does if it were not a musical? An odd thing to ponder, because you wouldn't expect people breaking out into song about anxiety and grief to make it better—but, it really does. The songs are wonderful, and almost certainly are the reason the Broadway play was so successful. Watch this movie and then try imagining the exact same story as a non-musical stage play. You'd be ready to slit your own wrists by the end of it. As it is, the music serves a dual purpose of keeping you engaged with the story, while also distracting you from how truly fucked up the premise is. As long as you give in to that distraction, you might leave with the delusion that this movie is actually great.

Connor has good reason to be pissed, I’m on his side!

Overall: C+

IN THE HEIGHTS

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+
Music: A-

It’s been a long while since we got a mainstream movie musical release that was so much fun. It’s arguably unfair to hold it to the standard of live theater—I always say movies should be judged by their own merits, after all—but I still found myself regularly thinking about how much more exciting In the Heights almost certainly would been to see live on Broadway; I never did see a stage production of it. That said, adapting a play for the screen in a way that makes the movie even close to equally worthy in its own right is notoriously difficult, and I can certainly say this much: In the Heights the movie stands on its own.

Is it an instant classic? Will it endure in audience before for decades to come, in the same vein as The Sound of Music or the original West Side Story? Not even close. It’s easy to see this movie being part of the 2021 Oscar conversation, which takes us into next year, but will people still be talking much about In the Heights even two years from now? I’d be very surprised. But, does a movie have to be an instant classic to be a hell of a great time? Certainly not. This is a movie that’s having a moment, and its time is now. I absolutely encourage everyone to revel in it.

And there is much to love about it. When it comes to the filming of song and dance numbers, cinematography and editing are key; far too often choreography gets shot and cut together in a way that makes it impossible to see the achievement in choreography. It’s exactly the same principle with action movies: if you can’t get a clear picture of the movement, then what’s the point? In In the Heights, although the editing even here is occasionally too rapid-fire for my taste, there are just enough wide shots to truly wow you with the intricacy of synchronized and intricately laid out choreography. Many of these shots are in the New York neighborhood streets of the title. One memorably electric sequence takes place at a public pool, the camera moving in and around crowded swimmers, at one point even going under the water, culminating in a richly charismatic rap by supporting actor Gregory Diaz IV, leading a group of waders in synchronized slaps of the water. The kind of planning and execution that goes into this is deeply impressive.

I do have to wonder how much of what we see onscreen in this movie is augmented by special effects. In another memorable shot, our lead character, Usnavi (a spectacularly well cast Anthony Ramos) is seen rapping through the window of his corner store, the crowd on the street dancing in the reflection. This is clearly an effects shot—otherwise you’d see cameras and crew in the reflection of the window—but it is a memorable and effective one.

In the Heights is based on the Tony-winning musical stage play by Lin-Manuel Miranda (who pops up a few times here as a fringe character, selling snow cones), originally produced some eight years prior to Hamilton. Here it is adapted by Quiara Alegría Hudes, the first feature film she has written, and directed by Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians). It examines love of community as well as heritage, here being the mostly Latino population of Washington Heights in Manhattan, and a pretty diverse array of ethnic backgrounds within South and Central America, and largely the Caribbean. It looks at gentrification and residents of a beloved neighborhood getting priced out, which means there is a fairly sad undercurrent to all the joyful celebrations seen onscreen.

The one non-Latino principal character is Benny, played by Corey Hawkins, previously seen as Dr. Dre in Straight Outta Compton and a bunch of other films that arguably make him the most recognizable actor in In the Heights. Well, except, for some, maybe Jimmy Smits, who plays frustrated father to Nina (Leslie Grace), who is quitting college at Stanford due to the isolation from her community. She also happens to be Benny’s love interest, their romance being the B plot which oddly never gets any definitive resolution by the end of the film.

For Usnavi’s part, he has eyes for aspiring fashion designer Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), who faces her own uphill battle facing stereotypes as she works on her ambitions. Between these two romances, familial tensions between Nina and her father, and “Abuela Claudia” (Olga Merediz) playing matriarch to the community as businesses get priced out of the neighborhood, there’s a whole lot going on in this movie. It’s a wonder they managed to cut it down to 143 minutes. The music is always great, but the level of narrative urgency varies a bit, what with all the layers of story that need to be conveyed. The public pool sequence is the best, but there are others in the film that might also qualify as showstoppers, and collectively make this movie worth seeing—particularly in a theater.

And, not to worry: the story here is one, ultimately, of triumph, of characters successfully adapting to a changing environment. A lot is made of how the neighborhood Usnavi knows and loves is “disappearing,” and if you think about it deeply enough, there won’t be anything he can do about that in the end. But for now at least, he and his family and friends and neighbors—and you—can feel pretty great about the world and their place in it, humming associated melodies all the way home.

If you must join a crowd, you could do worse than this one.

Overall: B+