Film Review: Dear Evan Hansen

I feel like it is important to start off this review of Dear Evan Hansen mentioning my knowledge of the property. I’ve been aware of the musical since it took the internet and Broadway by storm on the way to it winning the Tony in 2017. I listened to the soundtrack and the beautiful songs that were sung with such emotional resonance you couldn’t help but like it. That is, until I read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia and all that goodwill went to mush. I actively dislike this story and I wondered whether or not the film could right some of the wrongs that make the stage show so foolish and unfortunately, Dear Evan Hansen (the movie) has the same problem as Dear Evan Hansen (the musical).

After all, Dear Evan Hansen is the story of a kid Evan Hansen (Ben Platt), suffering from anxiety and depression, whose letter to himself ends up in the hands of Connor (Colton Ryan), a kid who has committed suicide. When found by Connor’s parents (Amy Adams, Danny Pino), he lies saying they were friends. Then when invited to attend dinner, blends his day in the forest where he broke his arm with a story about Connor at an orchard. Then he ropes a childhood friend (Nik Dodani) into crafting fake emails to help the charade and help the family get peace/get to know Connor’s sister. Naturally, this story gets bigger and eventually spirals out of control. If it sounds like I’m describing the behavior of a sociopath, well yes, but there’s much more to the movie than just this (though It’s mostly this).

Even though I have talked and will talk further in this review about why this story is not good, I must say that having knowledge of where the movie would go actually enabled me to appreciate more of the things the film got right. Much has been made of Ben Platt’s age, and he does look older on screen, but he is quite astounding in this movie. Whether it’s conveying the sheer weight of his character’s anxiety or being still in his more quiet moments, Platt gets to once again fully realize this character. It’s really quite the performance and it helps that everyone he gets to play off similarly rises to his equal, especially Amy Adams and Kaitlyn Dever. As the mother and sister of Connor, both women bring a really fascinating pathos to their characters. I was most intrigued by how the movie uses Adams’ natural light and twists it around grief. Amy lets us understand this is a woman who has to remain positive and seeing the good in things, lest she crumble to pieces, while Kaitlyn shows the ache in her heart at the fact that Connor may have cared for her character after all . Everyone in this movie also quits themselves extremely well to the songs, which is a blessing for the audience. If we’re going to sit through nonsense, it’s good that everyone in the film can sing them.

What is so frustrating about the Dear Evan Hansen story is that no amount of singing and admittedly great acting can overcome what is an incredibly flawed story. It’s a great pastime to watch people find out the plot of this movie in real time because it’s truly wild. It’s not even that Evan decides to lie when he gets nervous the first time he meets Conor’s parents or even when he makes up the story about Connor at the orchard. Dear Evan Hansen is really the story about a villainous ghoul that is convinced it’s a story about a heroic teen that should be looked at as hopeful. As such, the creators of this film completely shirk their duty to the audience and the characters. I am amazed that so many people find hope and understanding with Evan, and good on them, but my goodness does this movie not give you reason. It’s all surface level stuff and because this movie is not interested in treating these characters, especially Evan, with nothing but kid gloves, and kind of true moment gets snuffed out. Audiences are used to watching characters and wondering how they will get away with stuff, but this movie never gives Evan any kind of moment to wrestle with whether what he’s doing is right until stuff is about to come crashing down. How do neither Evan and his family friend who helped him fabricate the emails never have a meaningful conversation about how what they’re doing is really messed up? You know what the movie does have time for? A fun song about them faking Connor’s emails.

To make matters worse, the most consequential action is undertaken by Alana, a supporting character, when she leaks the note Evan wrote and gave to her as a way to fend off her questions about the ruse, and then is never brought back into the movie in a significant way. Amanda Stenberg, much like Nik Dodani, feels incorporated here to bring some diversity to a story that reads extremely white, and while both characters are integral to the plot they both don’t feel like they have any weight. They’re floating along and bumping against Evan when needed. There is such an interesting angle of exploring Alan’s decision to leak that email (it does serve her characters goal) but to not have a real moment where Evan gets mad and essentially let her off scot-free is amazing. The decision pushes Evan to reveal his deception but the aftermath is just left floating in the wind, anything worthy of real interrogation ignored.

This sort of sanding off anything prickly makes this movie incredibly enraging because it robs the movie of its power. Evan could be a complex character but by virtue of the fact that he jumped from a tree (in an attempt to commit suicide), the movie has decided that no matter how awful his actions are, nothing bad should happen. The biggest thing that happens to Evan is breaking up with Zoe and losing the familial connection with the Murphys. Important though that relationship was, it’s not tangible or interesting because nothing really changes about his life other than that. He goes back to school, is ignored or given weird looks just like he used to, graduates and takes photos with his family friend. All I could do was laugh because this movie would have you believe that the high schoolers who whipped out their phones to catch his embarrassment at the memorial would only just ignore him in the hallways once he was revealed as a mega liar. How the hell does Evan make it through this film without being called names or beat up upon revealing his deception to the community? How did Evan even get back into that school? Evan’s ride through this movie is way too smooth for a character who has done something truly heinous and because of that, lessens the impact of the one truly interesting moment: Connor’s family’s empathy. There was a lesson in forgiveness right there if only the movie would stop trying to make its lead not seem bad. It’s an abdication of duty by the storytellers to not truly explore the full range of this story because it’s only concerned about not being too mean to its protagonist. And it’s truly a shame that the cast brought their A game to a movie that was not as interested in serving their characters as they were.