Dear Evan Hansen (2021)

A high school student by the name of Evan Hansen (Ben Platt) suffers from social anxiety and is seeing a therapist and taking medication. But when a classmate (Colton Ryan) steals a letter Evan wrote to himself and later commits suicide, it is assumed the letter was written by the suicide victim to Evan. The dead boy's parents (Amy Adams, Danny Pino) contact Evan to find out more about their "friendship" and Evan's fabrications spiral into a morass of deceit and lies. Based on the Tony award winning musical and directed by Stephen Chbosky (WONDER). The stage musical was critically acclaimed and won six Tony awards but I've never seen it so I don't know how faithful the movie is to the stage musical. As to the film itself, it's a well intentioned misfire. A story about mental illness and youth suicide seems dubious material for a musical but nothing seems to go right. The monotonous songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who wrote the lovely songs for LA LA LAND, all sound alike so that you can't tell one from the other and their lyrics pound you over the head with their "message". It doesn't help that the film glosses over just how horrible Hansen's actions are and the movie's attempt to redeem him doesn't cut it. Ben Platt's Evan is an unappealing human being and rather than evoking empathy, his actions only serve to display how sick he really is. With Julianne Moore (in the film's best performance) as Evan's mother, Kaitlyn Dever, Amandla Stenberg and Nik Dodani.