“Dear Evan Hansen” is a six-time Tony-winning musical. It is based on the book by Steven Levenson. The music in the musical was written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. The movie adaptation came out on September 24, 2021. The problem is it sucks.
Musically, it is a pretty good movie. The issue is the problematic nature of the plot and the horrible character of Evan Hansen himself. The plot follows Evan Hansen, a high school student who struggles to make friends because of his anxiety and depression. Hansen’s therapist suggests that he start writing positive letters to himself to help his depression. The problems begin when Connor Murphy takes Hansen’s letter and commits suicide with the letter in his possession. The Murphy family believes that this note is Connor’s suicide note and thinks there was a secret friendship between Hansen and their son. Unable to break the news to the Murphys, Hansen goes along with the story and adds even more fabrications to build a close relationship with the family. He continues to dig himself in deeper and deeper until, eventually, the truth comes to light.
To start with the positive, the movie does make a genuine attempt to portray mental illness. To teenagers watching the film, it can be refreshing to see mental illness portrayed in a more real and raw way. They show Hansen having panic attacks and include conversations between Evan and Alana about medication for their mental illnesses. There were also some amazing acting performances such as those of Julianne Moore as Evan’s mother and Kaitlyn Dever as Zoe Murphy.
Now to the negative. There were of course complaints about non-musical theater-trained singers, with the exception of Ben Platt who played Evan Hansen on the original Broadway stage. Some casting was also questionable such as Ben Platt being 27 playing a 17-year-old. However, that is the least of the movie’s problems. The problems really come when people look at the plot that was questionable in the musical and loses much of its charm in movie form. Much of the problem is the way the story pities Hansen in certain situations. Hansen builds a very close relationship with the Murphy family through a lie and even builds a romantic relationship with Conner’s sister, Zoe Murphy. While building their relationship, he lies to Zoe about all these things that her brother said about her that obviously never happened. Even through this, they try to make the watcher sympathize with Hansen as he manipulates and lies to a grieving family about their deceased son/brother.
In “Words Fail” Hansen says, “I guess I thought I could be part of this. I never had this kind of thing before. I never had that perfect girl. Who somehow could see the good part of me. I never had the dad who stuck it out. No corny jokes or baseball gloves. No mom who just was there ’cause mom was all that she had to be.” This entire song gives Hansen a chance to explain himself and all he does is explain how awful his life is and how he had it so hard. They even allow Hansen a final meeting with Zoe where she forgives him.
Though I personally do not enjoy nor recommend the movie, people do enjoy. The bad may have outweighed the good in my opinion but it was not all bad at the end of the day.
