Long Beach
Movies where the star was not given any dialogue (“My Son”) and another one (“Dear Evan Hansen”) that stumbles around in spite of being based on a hit Broadway play hit the screens this week.
It’s Viewing the Videos.
STREAMING
My Son (Peacock)
The star of “My Son,” James McAvoy, was not supplied with a script or dialogue, being made to improvise for himself in this story of a kidnaped child. The rest of the cast had a complete script. Interesting, yes. A good idea? I’m not so sure. In might work for a film school project, or a film festival entry, but this is a lackluster effort for a big-time release.
Writer-director Christian Carion created a French version of this movie in 2017 from his novel, and then redid it in English.
McAvoy is a great actor but dropping him in the middle of this doesn’t yield the best results.
When Edmund (McAvoy) gets a phone call from his ex-wife Joan (Claire Foy), that their son is missing, he heads to a small rural British town. He finds his wife drugged by her new husband and well, you figure it out.
A movie must have a concept and everything on the screen must support that premise and help move things forward. “The Son” is two movies at one time, one with the actors who know where they’re going and other one with McAvoy trying to hit the spots.
McAvoy and Foy are excellent actors and while this is a by-the-numbers kidnaping tale (the kind the Liam Neeson or Bruce Willis could play in their sleep), the script, such as it is, doesn’t give the actors much to work with.
A rainy English setting doesn’t help set the mood of the movie. It just helps drag things down.
Sometimes bad movies are worth watching just because the actors shine in the face of bad material. Not this one.
One Palm Tree. Not even for free.
IN THEATERS
Dear Evan Hansen
Theatrical musicals are difficult to transfer to the movies. A couple of weeks ago, “Come from Away,” forced by the pandemic to film inside, delivered a brilliant. emotional and highly entertaining product.
“Dear Evan Hanson” took the other route to little success. “Dear Evan Hanson” expands a relatively intimate play to large indoor and outdoor settings with disappointing results. In addition, the actor who created the starring role as a high school senior on Broadway in 2016, Ben Platt, is now 28, and that distracts some viewers as being too old to play the role on film
And on top of that, it’s way too long at two hours and 17 minutes and the plot, while providing some heavy emotional impact, is somewhat incoherent. Portions of many of the songs are sung directly into the camera, which is distracting, not involving.
Too bad, because the music and lyrics, mostly by the guys who did “La La Land,” is enjoyable and catchy, while at the same time moving the plot forward.
“Dear Evan Hansen” is another story about youthful angst, lying troubled families, and a teenager suicide.
Evan (Ben Platt) is a struggling high school senior. We’ve seen this before: he’s nervous, socially anxious, has no friends. In this case, he’s also in therapy, taking medication and under the supervision of his therapist, writing self-affirming letters to himself. Another boy steals one of the letters and his parents find it after his suicide. Their son was troubled (obviously) and the parents, played with genuine pain by Amy Adams and Danny Pino (from CBS-TV’s “Cold Case,” who can also sing) latch on to Evan to help soothe their grief. Things get out of control after that, when Evan gets his sidekick Jared (the very amusing Nik Dodani) to fake some emails he supposedly sent Connor to help the parents with their loss.
Things snowball and soon there is an assembly honoring Connor and a tree building effort at a park (The Connor Project) in his name. And Evan is practically adopted by the family and falls in love with Connor’s sister, Zoe (Katlyn Dever from “Booksmart”) and so things are headed for a pretty big train wreck. In the meantime, Evan and his divorced mother, played with compassion and sensitivity by Julianne Moore, struggle to work out his problems and her problems as a single, overworked mom.
The directing is pedestrian with a lot of cliché-cuts in video to the songs. Director Stephen Chbosky should know better. He has experience in troubled teenagers. He wrote a best-selling coming-of-age novel, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” and turned it into an excellent movie that he wrote and directed. He missed the mark here. While there are quite a few tear-inducing moments here along with some great comic relief from Dodoni, this is an uneven experience at best.
As talented as Platt is (He won a Tony and a Grammy for the role he created), is he too old to play a teenager? I don’t think so. He’s no more out of place than say, John Travolta and Olivia Newton John in “Grease.” His appearance didn’t take me out of the story and his singing and acting are remarkable.
Platt is not what’s wrong with this movie. It’s way too long and somewhat disjointed. Wait for home viewing.
Two Palm Trees.
FROM THE VAULT
Split
“Split,” from 2016, sounds kind of like the opportunity for an actor to show off, playing 24 personalities. Written and directed by uniquely skilled M. Night Shyamalan, James McAvoy (“My Boy”) displays amazing range in lifting what could have been just another high-class horror film into something special.
HOW WE RATE THE FILMS
Home videos are simply rated recommended or not recommended.
New releases are rated as follows:
Five Palm Trees: Must see
Four Palm Trees: Worth seeing on the big screen
Three Palm Trees: Recommended for home viewing or on the big screen
Two Palm Trees: OK if you’re not paying
One Palm Tree: Skip it. Save your money and your time.
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