Dear Evan Hansen is viscerally uncomfortable to witness. Some of that discomfort is by design, as the original Tony-winning stage musical is built on a narrative foundation intended to make you squirm in your seat. Evan Hansen is an anxious, severely awkward teen outcast with no friends, a subpar home life, and a plethora of mental health issues. As part of a therapy exercise, he writes himself letters to express his deepest fears –– each beginning with the titular greeting, and ending with “sincerely, me.” A troubled, unfriendly fellow outcast named Connor Murphy bullies Evan and steals one of his letters.
The next day, Evan learns that Connor committed suicide, and that the Murphys found Evan’s letter. Since the top of the message reads “Dear Evan Hansen,” the family assumes that the letter was written by Connor to Evan, and that it contains their son’s final words. Evan then fabricates a fake relationship with Connor to reassure the Murphy family that their cruel, difficult son had a friend before he died, creating phony email correspondences and spinning elaborate tales of their imagined friendship. His speech at Connor’s memorial service goes viral, and Evan is thrust into a reluctant leadership role on The Connor Project, a student group for mental health awareness.
Screenwriter Steven Levenson carefully adapts the musical (for which he also penned the book) to ensure that Evan’s grim, sticky situation isn’t entirely the protagonist’s fault, as many of the mistruths about Connor are unintentionally thrust upon him by the Murphy family. At first, he’s not actively lying about the friendship that the family projects –– he just doesn’t correct their faulty assumptions and plays along. Evan is desperate for a comfortable family environment that his overworked single mother can’t provide, and the Murphys cling to every possible memory of their son, which makes their rapid connection understandable. The shaky foundation of Evan’s relationship with the Murphys provides rich dramatic tension for the story, and it’s painfully difficult to watch the titular teen dig himself deeper into his inescapable pit of lies.
An unfortunate amount of the movie’s discomfort stems from unintentional elements, though. The most obvious culprit is the casting of 27-year-old Ben Platt, whose bizarrely mature look was so distracting in the film’s marketing that memes about his age dominated the social media narrative surrounding the movie. Platt originated the title role onstage in 2015 to overwhelming acclaim, including a Tony win for Best Leading Actor in a Musical. His age isn’t as problematic as his performance style, though: Platt’s melodramatic gesticulations work perfectly when he needs to physically overemphasize the character’s emotions for the back seats in Broadway’s Music Box Theatre who can barely see him, but seem woefully out of place when every pore on his face stretches across a multiplex screen. His wild performance feels at odds with the rest of the cast, including Kaitlyn Dever, Julianne Moore, and Amy Adams, who all opt for a more understated style that better suits the filmic medium.
Beyond Platt’s miscalculated performance, the movie is a tonal mess, buckling under the weight of its disparate aspirations. The movie really wants to be taken seriously as a social issue drama, making frequent, noble, and sometimes successful attempts to empathize with young people struggling with mental health challenges. The film beefs up the role of Alana, an activist warmly portrayed by Amandla Stenberg, who sings a pair of new songs about depression that weren’t included in the stage show. Alana’s corner of the movie confronts mental illness more directly than anything in the play, and when paired with an increased insistence that “you are not alone” (which is repeatedly sung in the film’s one true ensemble number, “You Will Be Found”), it’s clear that the filmmakers intend to affirm viewers who may struggle with similar challenges as the characters.
Yet these attempts to destigmatize mental health largely fall flat, thanks to several genuinely mean-spirited jokes at Evan’s expense. It’s not that his character doesn’t deserve to be mocked –– believe me, he does –– but that the film wants the audience to laugh specifically at the protagonist’s social anxiety. Director Stephen Chbosky has demonstrated his ability to make us empathize with young outcasts, first with The Perks of Being a Wallflower and more recently with the undervalued Wonder, but both of those films had the sense not to actively victimize their characters with the kind of bullying behavior that causes people to feel isolated in the first place. I wish I could say the same for Dear Evan Hansen, but there are just too many laugh breaks after Evan says something awkward for me to believe that the film’s heart is always in the right place. It’s as if the filmmakers feared that an honest portrayal of mental health issues would make the audience feel too uncomfortable, so they threw in some cheap jokes to alleviate the tension –– but those jokes just undermine the entire purpose of the project, which inadvertently makes it even more uncomfortable.
The musical numbers only add further confusion to the mix. The music itself is quite powerful –– Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (The Greatest Showman) create complex, emotional characterization through soaring melodies and simple instrumentation that wouldn’t sound out of place on pop radio. Chbosky manages to convert one song, “Sincerely, Me,” into a terrific visual sequence in which Evan and reluctant acquaintance Jared draft several versions of fake emails. The director creatively stages the singers in a variety of hilarious positions that reflect the upbeat pizzazz of the music without literally visualizing the lyrics.
Most of the other songs, however, are emotional ballads that Chbosky confines to a couple of dimly-lit rooms, repetitively cutting between two or three angles of the performers sitting on a couch, or a bed, or in a car, or walking through a hallway. There is zero visual imagination or intrigue to these musical numbers, which makes even the best songs feel painfully long. I’ve never experienced cognitive dissonance on such a physical level in a movie theater as I did watching this movie: there were numerous moments where the music gave me goosebumps as I shook my head and rolled my eyes at the lifeless non-happenings on screen.
The overall movie is an unfortunate, fascinating mishmash of contradictions. Its darkness and cruelty continually butt heads with its attempts at uplifting affirmation, and its flat visual style upends the dazzling soundtrack. Just listen to the songs on Spotify with your eyes closed and imagine a movie that connects them –– whatever you come up with is bound to be better than the real thing.