11/27/2023 0 Comments Tik tik boom filmWere you to be critical of anything, it's that the movie never fully explores the impact of Larson's obsession on those around him. There's even a fun cameo from Bradley Whitford as the Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim. They all receive their own numbers to perform, but it's when they come together – such as in the brilliant opener '30/90' – that you realise just how talented this ensemble is. While it's definitely Garfield's show, there's strong supporting turns from Alexandra Shipp as Susan, Robin de Jesús as Michael and Vanessa Hudgens as Karessa, one of Jon's friends who also performs in the monologue. It's compelling to watch, and it's hard to believe this is his first musical role. He's also aware of when to slow things down to make the emotional impact, such as in the ballad 'Why'. Garfield conveys this with a restless performance that sees Jon always moving, a bundle of nervous energy that's barely contained. The ticking in the title refers to the pressure Jon feels to make his mark before he's 30, which affects his relationship with his girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Shipp) and best friend Michael (Robin de Jesús). In the central role, Andrew Garfield is a revelation with a magnetic performance up there with his strongest to date. Netflix movies have often had criticism over their 'TV feel', but you'll wish you saw this film on the biggest screen possible. This gives Miranda the freedom to be creative with the story Jon is telling, crafting inventive and fantastical sequences from a 90s hip-hop video to a powerhouse duet that cuts between a workshop and Jon's imagination. Instead, he cleverly cuts between Jon (Garfield) performing his monologue to an audience and the flashbacks he's describing. Miranda takes inspiration from this, but the movie is far from a stagey recreation of either version of the musical. Instead, it focuses on the eponymous autobiographical "rock monologue" he created in 1990 which tells the story of his struggles to get his first musical, Superbia, produced.įollowing Larson's death, the monologue was revised into a three-actor musical. While there are nods to the masterpiece that he would create and the influences behind it, tick, tick. He suffered an aortic dissection believed to caused by undiagnosed Marfan syndrome, a rare genetic disorder. When do you cut your losses and bail out for a straight, boring job in, say, advertising? The world is ticking like a time bomb and soon your career will blow up, and not in a good way.Jonathan Larson tragically passed away at the age of 35 on the morning of Rent's first Off-Broadway performance. The film is about an irony that was to afflict Larson in ways he couldn’t have conceived: the ordeal of the quarter-life crisis, the first glimmers of approaching mortality and the realisation that options are closing down, something that particularly afflicts those approaching their 30s in the creative arts who don’t seem to be making it. This movie has been adapted by screenwriter Steven Levenson from tick, tick … BOOM!, Larson’s autobiographical piece that came just before Rent, and told the story of his first major musical project: a wildly ambitious futurist fantasy called Superbia that almost no one seemed to get. (Miranda himself has a cameo as a short-order cook in the diner where Larson had to work as a waiter in his early years.) Larson was the composer who created the smash-hit 90s show Rent but died at 35 of an aortic failure, just before opening night, an almost unbearable metaphor for the backstage heartbreak of musical theatre. Lin-Manuel Miranda gives us an unashamed sugar rush of showbiz rapture and showbiz solemnity in this heartfelt tribute to Broadway talent Jonathan Larson, played here by Andrew Garfield.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |