Everyone hates the Dear Evan Hansen film adaptation. [Jezebel]
Again, people absolutely loathe Dear Evan Hansen. [Buzzfeed]
John Oliver talks about voting rights. [Pajiba]
I’m not sure about this Prabal Gurung on Priyanka Chopra. [Tom & Lorenzo]
TikToker Jake Barr is an LGBTQ+ ally. [OMG Blog]
More about Big Apple Bennifer, aka Autumnal Bennifer. [LaineyGossip]
Liz Cheney remains an ideological mess. [Towleroad]
Are you into this Temperley London collection? [GFY]
Machine Gun Kelly’s got beefs with everybody. [Dlisted]
I had no idea Freddie Highmore was even old enough to be married. [JustJared]
I’m sorry, WTF?? [Starcasm]
Freddie Highmore is forever nine years old and starring in Finding Neverland with Kate Winslet and some scruffy dude.
Hee. I’m still wrapping my head around FH as Norman Bates. 😉
What a weird photoshoot for Temperley London. The gigantic clown feet were a bit distracting.
I…am so confused. Hulk is 35. His former niece-in-law/current GF and baby mama is 32. His ex wife is 33. Ex wife is extra sad because niece was like a daughter to her. Would’ve bought sister. Hulk says he only married wife because she was knocked up – no love there. This is one gigantic mess that I would’ve never believed even in the trashiest soap. Sad for the kids – especially the one who will one day think his conception was the accident that destroyed his family. Come to think of it, two kids might fit that description. Sigh.
I have to admit, I read this comment before I clicked that link, and I honestly thought this was some horrible, horrible reference to the plot-line for the new She-Hulk movie, and was growing increasingly more upset over what they were doing to Tatiana Maslany.
Oops.
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I watched the trailer and it looks awful, like this nepotism guy looks a super rough 45 🤣🤣 I Just can’t suspend my disbelief that he’s in high school
That Hulk story is messy af. Her niece is the same age as her, but she was a daughter to her? They all lying.
My boys love the soundtrack to Dear Evan Hansen so we listen to it a lot, but I didn’t really know anything about the plot until the trailer and it looks depressing as hell. I’ll probably pass, and I love movie musicals.
Same here, I’ve heard and liked some of the songs, but didn’t know what it was about.
Please do not judge the musical by this mess. I saw the musical for the first time two years ago, and it immediately became my favorite musical (and I’ve seen a ton). The set designs are incredibly innovative and unique. The songs are powerful. They manage to hit a lot of topics, not limited to the struggle to fit in, such as the struggles of being a single parent and dealing with grief.
When I started hearing about a movie, I thought it was simply a film version of the musical, like Rent, Les Mis, In the Heights, or even just Hamilton. Those are true to the musicals. I haven’t seen it, but the DEH movie just seems to be loosely adapted from the musical. It sounds like a total effing mess.
I saw the musical on Broadway in late 2019. Ben Platt had already aged out of the role. The boy who was playing Evan Hansen, Andrew Barth Feldman, was wonderful and would still have been age appropriate for the movie cast. He was around 17 when I saw him and he is still under 20. That would have kept the role age appropriate, in line with the rest of the movie cast and placated the “we want to see the Broadway cast in the movie” group. Platt was clearly a nepotism pick.
That said, I had a lot of reservations about the show and even more about the movie. The set and staging were brilliant, the cast was strong, and the songs are very powerful. The story itself was and is very problematic. It glosses over issues of adolescent mental illness in a way that is disturbing. It shrugs off a teenage suicide as “he was a troubled kid.” Yes, it’s a two an a half hour show and can’t hit everything, but that’s a big piece to leave out, particularly since it’s a critical plot point.
Well it’s about suicide and anxiety/depression. And in the end, the ability for a white cis-gendered male to get away with major lies with little to no repercussions.
The move tries to fix this a little, but it never was that great. People just never really saw that.
One word for Bennifer 2.0’s giddiness: ‘shrooms.
For Dear Evan Hanson, Ben Platt’s age seems be be a huge issue, even just in the trailer.
Matt Platt could have sucked it up as producer and said “nope, sorry Ben, you’ve aged out of the part”
Michael Douglas faced a similar dilemma, back when he was producing One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, and he sucked it up and said “Sorry Dad, I know you played McMurtry on Broadway, but that was years ago and you’ve aged out of the part. Jack Nicholson is doing it”
Supposedly Kirk kvetched about that decision for years, but it made for a better film, and they both made boatloads of money off the movie.
Yeah I’m no fan of the show but tossing in my two cents: it was a huge mistake not to cast someone young (or very young appearing). First off the stage lends itself far more to that sort of suspension of disbelief. I’m also not surprised to read the mannerisms he used to appear younger on stage just come across as overdone on screen. It’s a different medium!!
Also, just read the synopsis, the main character does something horrifying and loathsome. That doesn’t mean there can’t be a journey there but again, plays very different for a teenage boy than for a clearly adult male. Just a massive miscalculation all around!
You’re right, the only reason the audience can even start to sympathise with Evan (especially with how the story ends, won’t go into spoilers) is because he’s young and things spiral far out of his control so quickly. So much less credible and sympathetic when he comes across as a very much an adult and, worse, older than the rest of the cast.
And add to that that Kaitlyn Denver does come across as young and the main relationship in the story becomes pretty horrifying (and it wasn’t great to start with).
It’s really not an exaggeration to say that having Evan look old completely destroys the story.
I never saw Dear Evan Hansen the musical, but I know the plot and that alone seems like enough to hate this. It sounds like a truly awful story with an awful “protagonist.”
My daughter loves the music from the Broadway version and *really* wanted to see this – I had absolutely no desire as the story sounds whack. Thankfully, one of her friends’ parents took one for the team and drove a whole group of friends to the movie. They enjoyed talking about it (and were mad about certain songs being cut), so I’m glad it was a thing for them and am grateful I didn’t have to see it!
The Broadway show was excellent. Even moved my husband to almost tears and he is not overly emotional.
The Trainwreck of a movie has been topic of discussion for weeks here and my kids (who loved the show) are brutally dismissive of the movie
I’ve never seen Dear Evan Hansen but I like the original Broadway cast soundtrack and think Ben Platt has a great voice. I have a masters in vocal performance, so I love hearing good vocalists! I’ve heard a few tracks from the movie soundtrack and they sound terrible. All of the vocals, even Ben Platt’s, are hugely auto tuned/processed/pitch corrected/whatever the correct term is. It’s like Emma Watson from Beauty and the Beast all over again. This is such a huge trend now and it makes me so sad. It used to be that they’d only go over the top for poor vocalists, but now they do it for good vocalists and ruin the organic, acoustic quality of the voice in favour of something fake and electronic. Sigh.