A Broadway musical on screen. Hmm…
“It’s a testament to the songwriting prowess of La La Land duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul that Dear Evan Hansen has gotten anywhere.
“The story alone is so icky, so offensive, so profoundly manipulative and fraudulent, that it really never should have gotten a single Tony (or six), much less a film adaptation. Its music, however, is fairly affecting. So that’s something.
“In Stephen Chbosky’s film, as in the show on which it’s based, Evan Hansen (Ben Platt) is a teenager struggling with extreme social anxiety whose therapy exercise of writing himself encouraging letters gives the musical its title.
“On the first day of school, his troubled classmate Connor (Colton Ryan) finds one of Evan’s letters in a library printer and, outraged that it includes a mention of his sister (and Evan’s crush) Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever), storms out of the room, keeping the letter despite Evan’s protests.”
Read more at EW
