Critic Reviews

If you’ve ever felt alone and ignored in life, Dear Evan Hansen may touch you in profound ways.

It’s messy at times and melodramatic at others, and its treatment of mental health issues is not the most nuanced, but those feel like quibbles given the joy you can find in its best moments.

The songs are clever; the actors dig in (especially Amy Adams and Julianne Moore as Connor and Evan’s moms, respectively). And Ben Platt’s voice is undeniable, a thing of wonder, a pure emotion-delivery system. You will be moved.

By scaling back the script’s laughs and excising four songs (plus countless reprises), the film at times lands in an uncanny valley between the heightened musical at its core and the weightier young adult drama Chbosky seems to have envisioned.

The film version of the multiple Tony Award–winning hit Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen is a mixed bag and a wonky adaptation that doesn’t always quite scan. Yet I’d be lying if I didn’t say that despite its flaws, it’s also strangely affecting.

Sorry, haters, the film isn’t a train wreck. This musical, which had its Broadway premiere in 2016, works better in the theater. But the translation to the screen is smoother than expected.

A weakness for the formulaic, combined with a noticeably weighty running time, continually bumps up against the film’s many fine points.

Dear Evan Hansen gives enjoyable, tuneful voice to important modern-day concerns but lacks the dramatic and cinematic chops to really take flight.

Flawed? You bet, but the film of the Broadway musical about teen suicide is not the crime against humanity some claim. Yes, Ben Platt, 27 is playing a high school kid, but he inhabits the role he created on stage with every fiber of his being and hits you like a shot in the heart.

You see Evan Hansen, all of his flaws and desires and self-loathing laid bare. And there are enough of these goosebump-inducing, epiphanic moments courtesy of the actor that you see why people might love this film as well as cringe at it. Platt does not ruin the movie. He singlehandedly gives it a voice.