Directed by: Stephen Chbosky
Starring: Ben Platt, Amy Adams, Julianne Moore, Kaitlyn Dever, Amandla Stenberg
Dear Evan Hansen is based on the internationally renowned Broadway Musical of the same name, and it tells the story of Evan Hansen (played by Ben Platt), a teenager dealing with depression and anxiety who is given an assignment by his therapist to write a letter to himself about how good his day is going to be. He accidentally prints out one of these letters addressed to himself and it is taken by another wayward teen at his school named Connor Murphy. Connor commits suicide and the Dear Evan Hansen letter is found on his person. His parents contact Evan thinking that he had some kind of intimate friendship with their son. Evan goes along with the ruse and makes up a fake relationship he had with Connor. In the meantime, Evan becomes close with Connor’s grieving sister (played by Kaitlyn Dever) who and the two eventually start dating. Evan also gives an emotional speech at Connor’s memorial service that goes viral and makes him an internet celebrity. Another student dealing with mental health issues, Alina (Amandla Stenberg), helps Evan set up a foundation in Connnor’s name but quickly starts seeing holes in Evans story.
Evan Hansen is bad in a myriad of different ways. Let’s get the Ben Platt of it all out of the way. The fact that he is a 27-year old man playing an 18 year old kid doesn’t really bother me that much. We have older actors playing teens all the time. Take a look at the new Gossip Girl Remake or the original run of Gossip Girl for that matter. So his age doesn’t really affect the performance. The real issue I have is that they attempted to make him look younger using makeup and a strange curly haircut that makes him look like a creepy porcelain doll. Ben Platt’s age is the least of Dear Evan Hansen’s problems.
The real issue with Dear Evan Hansen is that it touches on a lot of serious topics: teen suicide, depression, anxiety, the perails of social media but it never engages any of these topics in any kind of deep or meaningful way. Let’s take the topic of therapy for instance, the main plot device of the movie is that Evan Hansen’s therapist gives him an assignment to write a letter to himself, which Connor finds and this kickstarts the story. Other than being a device to get the story going Evan’s therapy is never mentioned again. At the end of the movie, after he has done a bunch of horrible things, he makes it seem like his life is starting to get a little bit better but he never mentions if he’s continued therapy or how he has processed everything that’s happened.
And there is a lot to process. So many messed up things happen in Dear Evan Hansen that it borders on parody. Evan Hansen lies to a dead kid’s parents that he knew their son, he gives a moving (yet completely fictitious speech) at the kid’s memorial, he uses this opportunity to start dating the dead kid’s sister. The worst part about Dear Evan Hansen is that this horrific and mostly insensitive story is wasting a whole heap of amazing performers. This film is generally well made, the cast is top notch with Amy Adams, Julianne Moore, and Kaitlyn Dever all trying their absolute hardest to prop up this bizarre material. And Ben Platt is a talented performer, he is captivating to watch and his singing ability is indisputable. However, I very strongly believe that this movie has no business being a musical. The singing is weird. I don’t have anything against musicals or musicals that tackle difficult subject matter like suicide but the songs are all pretty upbeat and catchy and at times inspirational? There is nothing inspirational or uplifting happening in this movie so the tone just seems completely disconnected from what’s happening in the movie. However, “Waving through a Window” is a truly great song and will get stuck in your head for weeks after watching this movie- you’ve been warned.
There are some interesting ideas that this movie brings up. I particularly like the idea of how people remember and honour dead people who they didn’t particularly like. Connor was a very troubled young man and in all likelihood he was suffering from some serious mental health issues but he was also an asshole that caused a lot of trauma for his sister. When a person dies, even if it’s a tragic death, that doesn’t magically erase all of the bad things that they did. Of course, Dear Evan Hansen doesn’t explore that topic in any meaningful way.
Look, if you watched Dear Evan Hansen and it spoke to your experience and it helped you through a difficult time like it did so many people during its Broadway run, I’m glad. But I think these topics are important and they should be handled with more care. I don’t think Dear Evan Hansen is malicious in any way, I think that the movie is a lot like Evan Hansen himself, it wants to do good, it wants to say important things, and be an inspiration, it just doesn’t quite know how and it just falls short.
