Review: Dear Evan Hansen

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

A lot of hatred has been thrown at the big-screen adaptation of the surprise Broadway hit "Dear Evan Hansen," and while, yes, it has its issues and is a far cry from the excellent previous film about youth angst from director Stephen Chbosky - his lovely adaptation of his own novel, "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" - it's not the atrocity you might have heard it is.

Much of the vitriol aimed at the picture - which, at 137 minutes, is a bit long and the transitions into song from dialogue are occasionally a little awkward - seems to be centered around the fact that Ben Platt, who is 28 years old and starred in the Broadway production, doesn't look like he's in high school. At the same time, he looks young enough, so this isn't one of those Luke Perry situations, if you know what I mean.

Secondly, many of the reviews have pegged the lead character, Evan (Platt), as some sort of megalomaniacal villain, whereas he's instead a young man who's nearly crippled by social anxiety, and the role he takes in a community's grieving over the death of another young man who almost nobody knew actually starts from a good place, even if later it spirals out of control, and Evan seems to like that the dead boy's family sort of adopts him (his own mother, played well by Julianne Moore, works at a hospital and isn't home as much as she'd like to be).

The story is basically this: Evan has no friends, and neither does Connor (Colton Ryan), who's own anxiety causes him to lash out and occasionally act violently. Evan has a crush on Connor's sister, Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever), although there's some confusion regarding her character because she appears to be younger than Evan and Connor, but then she graduates at the same time as Evan late in the film.

Anyway, Evan is assigned by his psychiatrist to write inspirational letters to himself - which begin "Dear Evan Hansen" - as a way to combat his social anxiety. After printing one of the letters out one day, Connor gets to it first at the printer and refuses to give it back to Evan. Later that day, Connor commits suicide and his grieving parents - Cynthia (Amy Adams) and Larry (Danny Pino) - mistake Evan's letter to himself as a suicide note written from Connor to Evan. They assume Evan was his only friend.

Although he tries to explain that he wrote the letter, Evan recognizes that Connor's parents need to believe that Connor wasn't alone and had a friend, so he plays along with their belief that Connor wrote the letter. This then creates sympathy from the student body toward Evan and Connor - both of whom were previously ignored by other students - and eventually makes Cynthia, Larry and Zoe begin to consider Evan as one of the family after they spend time with him. A romance also blooms with Zoe.

As Evan's lie snowballs, a fund is started in Connor's name by an enterprising, but also socially anxious (albeit outwardly gregarious), young woman named Alana (Amandla Stenberg), who wants Evan to take part in the group to help raise funds for a park that will be named after Connor at an orchard where he apparently used to like to spend time.

One of the film's problems is that it doesn't appear to know what to make of Evan. As I'd mentioned, his original reason for lying about being Connor's friend was to comfort Connor's distraught parents, who believed their son didn't have a friend in the world. Yes, Evan eventually begins to benefit from this arrangement - with Zoe's affections as well as an offer made by Connor's parents to Evan's mother later in the movie - but he never comes off as the conniving, self-centered villain in which some reviews have painted him.

And Platt's age isn't as much of a distraction as the occasional awkward segues from dialogue into songs, and the way these scenes are shot - quite often, two people sitting on a couch singing to each other. The songs themselves are OK, but the performers give them their all. Moore is convincing as Evan's proud mother, who doesn't like the fact that people believe she is too poor to pay for higher education for her son - by the way, it always makes me laugh how the homes of the "poor" are depicted in movies, and this film is no exception. Other supporting performances were noteworthy as well - especially Nik Dodani as Jared, Evan's only other sort-of friend, who provides some levity.

With his "Perks of Being a Wallflower" novel and film, Chbosky showed some real mastery of the coming-of-age genre, but while "Dear Evan Hansen" is overly long and not on par with that film, it's neither the complete fiasco that some might have you believe it is. In the way it depicts social anxiety among young people and the feeling of loneliness among outcasts in high school, it has its heart in the right place. It's a film that means well and hits some of the right notes, even if others don't ring as true. It's somewhat of a mixed bag, but it has its moments.