5 Years Ago Today: One Of The Worst Broadway Adaptations Ever Made Arrived In Theaters
by Sandy Schaefer · /FilmAdd SlashFilm on Google:
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Few things are as funny as people's reactions when they finally learn what "Dear Evan Hansen" is about. The original stage musical was first performed in 2015, a year before debuting on Broadway, and would go on to win several Tony Awards, including one for Best Musical. Armed with songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (who took home an Oscar not long after for their work on Damien Chazelle's 2016 musical movie mega-hit "La La Land"), it focuses on one Evan Hansen, a lonely teenager dealing with society anxiety and depression during his senior year of high school.
This is where the story takes a hard-right into Problematic Town. Through a series of events, Evan is mistakenly believed to have been close to Connor Murphy, a classmate who only barely died by suicide. However, when he's unable to tell Connor's anguished family the truth, Evan finds himself getting pulled deeper into his inadvertent lie. Yet, in doing so, he not only brings comfort to Connor's grieving loved ones but also earns the attention and admiration of his peers like he's long desired ... assuming he can keep the charade going.
Suffice it to say, it takes an extremely delicate tonal balance to make a premise like that work. Unfortunately, the 2021 film version of "Dear Evan Hansen" doesn't come anywhere close to achieving that, resulting in a Broadway adaptation that aspires to be emotionally realistic and uplifting yet mostly leaves you grimacing at how painfully misguided it is. It's pretty clumsy from a technical standpoint as well, as the movie's many musical numbers are weighed down by awkward blocking or framing. There's a reason for that, though, and it explains how "Dear Evan Hansen" became a big screen disaster upon arriving five years ago to the day.
Dear Evan Hansen should've stayed a relic of a pre-pandemic world
"Dear Evan Hansen" was one of the first major studio movies to start filming after the COVID-19 pandemic shut down Hollywood in 2020 (and everything else along with it). That meant director Stephen Chbosky and his cast and crew were (rightly) required to follow strict social distancing guidelines to ensure everyone's safety during production. Being in unprecedented territory, then, you can see why they struggled when it came to staging the movie's showtunes. The fact that Chbosky was really only experienced in helming grounded dramas like "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" and "Wonder" surely only made things that much harder.
This brings us to Ben Platt, who portrayed Evan after starring in the original stage musical. As much as the actor was mocked for being too old-looking (he was almost 27 at the time), the real issue is that he'd simply outgrown the role emotionally, and it shows. To that point: "Dear Evan Hansen" has always been polarizing, yet it clearly struck enough of a chord with Broadway fans to become a phenomenon in the 2010s. But a lot happened in the six years it took to become a movie, and what might've gotten a pass from musical theater types in 2015 was wildly out of touch with what the movie-loving masses wanted (nay, expected) post-2020.
Had Chbosky and writer Steven Levenson, say, incorporated some dark comedy or satirized how people and communities exploit tragedies in "Dear Evan Hansen" (like Bob Goldthwait did in his 2009 Robin Williams dramedy "World's Greatest Dad," which has a surprisingly similar plot), we might be having a different conversation. Instead, between earning the ire of critics and flopping at the box office, their movie became a cautionary tale.