“Dear Evan Hansen” Review – The Hollywood Reporter

It’s easy to see why the Toronto International Film Festival chose to kick off its 46th edition with the world premiere of Dear Evan Hansen. After all, what better choice to reflect the collective post-containment zeitgeist than the film version of Broadway’s shattering musical about making human bonds in a world of loneliness and uncertainty?

Less clear is the extent to which fans will embrace an adaptation that, as heartfelt as it is, often falls short of the intended mark and emotionally uplifting.

Filmed last summer in the midst of the pandemic under the direction of Stephen Chbosky (Charlie’s world), with Ben Platt reprising his touching, Tony Award-winning lead role, the production is claiming its fair share of lovingly crafted moments.

But in the transition of the story from a proposition in two acts to a proposition in three acts, the Hansen of Platt is not the only one to sometimes feel outside, because the imperatives of opening of the intimate settings Too often result in numbers that incorporate remote cutaways and stills from music videos that dampen their potency.

A weakness for the formula, combined with a noticeably heavy runtime, continually collides with the film’s many fine points, provided by the supporting set including Kaitlyn Dever, Amandla Stenberg, Colton Ryan, Julianne Moore and Amy Adams.

After shedding a few pounds and growing his hair out (he made his tongue wag when the trailer first dropped), 27-year-old Platt convincingly refers to his teenage geek as the very introverted and over-medicated Hansen. , a high school student whose usually sweaty palms keep him well away from cool kids.

He is nonetheless reluctantly put in the spotlight when one of the therapeutic cover letters he wrote himself appears in the possession of his sociopath classmate Connor Murphy (Colton Ryan), who committed suicide. Believing that Evan is his son’s only bond, Connor’s mother (Amy Adams) invites him into their home, prompting Hansen to fabricate a non-existent friendship between them that inevitably grows out of hand.

Along the way, Evan bonds with both Connor’s sister, Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever), and the school’s resident activist, Alana (Amandla Stenberg) and finds himself doing a little less’ shake through. a window ‘in the process.

As for the songs on the stage version, four of them were not included in the film, including the original opening, “Anybody Have a Map”. In their place are a pair of new Benj Pasek-Justin Paul numbers, including the painful “The Anonymous Ones”, performed by Stenberg.

They fit well into the Hansen tapestry, as do, for the most part, the passages from the direct dramatic scenes (provided by Steven Levenson, based on his book for The Stage Show) to the song, especially the delicate reading. by Platt of “You Will Be Found” and Moore’s beautiful interpretation of “So Big / So Small”, two tracks wisely left free of visual embellishments.

The lack of a more cohesive unifying tone is noticeable in director Chbosky’s non-musical interpretations, which also sometimes struggle to strike a pleasant balance between the theatrical and the melodramatic.

Despite the pesky distractions, Platt and the company still manage to deliver the right message at the right time.