PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Jan 3, 2022 22:44:19 GMT -5
All in all, I'd say that 2021 has been a pretty strong year for musicals (as long as you pay no attention to financial returns and ignore Dear Evan Hansen), so the fact that I loved Tick Tick Boom feels only appropriate. Adapted from the stage musical of the same name, the film tells the story of Jonathan Larson (Andrew Garfield), the lyricist famous for creating Rent. But Tick Tick Boom takes place before that, specifically as he was trying to get another Broadway show he wrote, Superbia, off the ground. Moreover, it deals with the effects that all the stress and pressure of that is having on Larson in the days leading up to the workshop of his proposed musical, and through that, this story itself becomes a musical. But the musical numbers here are interesting in that half of them are woven into scenes as is tradition, while the other half are performed sort of as a show-within-a-show of the actual Tick Tick Boom stage show, with Garfield as Larson performing them on a stage. Suffice it to say that it's a very interesting structure that allows for a lot of creative directorial flourishes to be employed to effectively make sure that everything flows smoothly...which it absolutely does. But here's the kicker: this film is the directorial debut of well-known Theater geek Lin-Manuel Miranda. So the fact that Tick Tick Boom feels so skillfully and confidently directed is all the more impressive. This material requires a very careful hand to thread the line between the "real world" elements and the musical numbers, and Miranda does that rather excellently through great use of cinematography and nicely-employed cross-cutting techniques. From the moment the film begins, there's a confidence on his part that oozes off the screen and pulls us in. Miranda also does a great job of making sure the songs stay rooted in the emotions of the characters. Not a whole lot of them are overly memorable (except 30/90 and Louder Than Words), but they all work because they really enhance the major emotional beats and serve to progress character development. One in particular, Therapy, really stands out as an example of that and is quite clever in execution. But really, this movie truly belongs to Andrew Garfield more than anybody else and my God, what a performance this is. He inhabits Jonathan Larson from Minute One and gives a fully committed performance that continually impressed me. If it's not the best performance that Garfield has given in his career thus far, then it's damn close. He shows such immense talent in this film, that it's really kind of staggering, but it's the theme at the heart of this film and character arc that makes it all so impactful. It's all about that pressure and fear of getting out something that can prove your worth and define who you are before it's too late, and the way both the film as a whole and Andrew Garfield's performance conveys that is rather beautiful, but it hits so hard because it's something we've all felt to some degree. And that relatability to the material is what keeps the heart of the film beating steadily. This is an engaging and moving story on its own, but everything from the songs, to Andrew Garfield and especially Lin Manuel-Miranda's direction really enhance it all into something special. Tick Tick Boom may not be the musical to win over non-believers, but it is still a very creative and earnest expression of the genre where the amount of care put into it is evident in every scene. And fortunately, that translates into one of the best movies of 2021. ****/**** |
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Jan 10, 2022 23:50:37 GMT -5
Tick, Tick… Boom!(1/8/2022)
The movie Tick, Tick… Boom! had a lot working against it for me. Firstly it’s based on a play by Johnathan Larson, who is most famous for writing the musical “Rent” before passing away from an undiagnosed heart condition. I’ve never seen a full production of “Rent” but everything about it and the entitled twenty somethings it’s about strikes me as deeply annoying. Then there was the fact that it was directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, which probably would have seemed like a positive for me a year ago but the dude has really over extended himself across something like a half dozen projects this year and I’m getting kind of sick of him. But most of all I was kind of dreading watching this because it has at its center Andrew Garfield. I’ve really tried to give this guy a chance but man, I can’t stand him. He’s almost certainly my least favorite major actor working today and having him star as a Johnathan Larson surrogate seemed like a recipe for wretchedness. So, I guess it’s a testament to this movie that with all this stacked against it I not only didn’t hate but actually kind of liked the final product despite having a big pile of biases working against it.
As stated before this is based on a Jonathan Larson play, which in its first form was a kind of autobiographical musical one-man-show he put on prior to getting rent off the ground but after failing to get an earlier musical called “Superbia” and it was sort of an account of what writing and workshopping that first musical was like. My understanding is that this was expanded into a three person show by others after Larson’s death and that is the version that the world came to know as “Tick, Tick… Boom!” but I believe further adaptations have been made here. My understanding is that the play, while obviously about Larson, is presented about being about a fictional character but the film comes right out and says this is about historical playwright John Larson and place him in historical context, essentially making the autobiographical biographical. That’s a neat idea and this production is pretty well removed from other bigger budgeted musicals this year like In the Heights or West Side Story. Some of the music is performed by the Larson character on screen but a lot of it is done by cutting to an on-stage performance that I assume is not unlike the “Tick, Tick… Boom!” stage show. I mentioned before that I had some pretty negative views of “Rent” but that is mainly on a story and attitude level, on a musical level it’s pretty hard to deny that the dude can write a tune and while I wouldn’t say the music here is top of the line it does work more than it doesn’t.
I would also say, to his credit, that I did not completely hate Andrew Garfield here. Looking at old pictures of Larson I get why he was cast. That dopey look that Garfield usually has pasted to his face blends in better with this role than it does in some of the other movies that Garfield has made and while he’s not the greatest singer in the world I doubt Larson was either given that he was ultimately more of a behind the scenes performer so it mostly fits. I would also say that unlike “Rent,” which very much seems to admire these pissant kids who think their entitled to free housing, there is at least some perspective here about why someone like Larson and his “bohemian” tendencies would be a bit of a pain in the ass to be around, though at the end of the day Miranda clearly admires this guy and can only go so far in criticizing him. Like the stage version this is basically an experimental musical and some of the things it tries work better than others. There’s a side character who suddenly becomes pretty important late in the film who probably could have been fleshed out a little more earlier and the film is only sporadically interested in the fact that it’s set in the 90s and is sometimes more and sometimes less successful at capturing that time period. Those are basically quibbles but I think the bigger problem is just that, though he likely has more experiences on his resume than many, Lin-Manuel Miranda is still a debut film director and he hasn’t quite pinned down a style yet and you can tell he doesn’t quite have that full vision but he hardly embarrasses himself either. This is a cool little movie, one that would probably stand out to me more in a year that didn’t have so many other musicals to compete with.
***1/2 out of Five
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