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      TRAILER 3:45

      Dear Evan Hansen

      2021, Musical/Drama, 2h 17m

      279 Reviews 1,000+ Verified Ratings

      What to know

      Critics Consensus

      Dear Evan Hansen does a fair job of capturing the emotion of its source material, but it's undermined by questionable casting and a story that's hard to swallow. Read critic reviews

      Audience Says

      This heartwarming story is relatable for teens and anyone who remembers being one -- and despite the age gap between himself and his character, Ben Platt's performance is great. Read audience reviews

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      Dear Evan Hansen  Photos

      Movie Info

      The breathtaking, generation-defining Broadway phenomenon becomes a soaring cinematic event as Tony, Grammy and Emmy Award winner Ben Platt reprises his role as an anxious, isolated high schooler aching for understanding and belonging amid the chaos and cruelty of the social-media age.

      • Rating: PG-13 (Some Suggestive References|Brief Strong Language|Suicide|Thematic Material)

      • Genre: Musical, Drama

      • Original Language: English

      • Director: Stephen Chbosky

      • Producer: Marc Platt, Adam Siegel

      • Writer: Steven Levenson

      • Release Date (Theaters):  wide

      • Release Date (Streaming):

      • Box Office (Gross USA): $15.0M

      • Runtime:

      • Distributor: Universal Pictures

      • Production Co: Universal Pictures, Marc Platt Productions, Perfect World Pictures

      • Sound Mix: Dolby Digital

      • Aspect Ratio: Scope (2.35:1)

      Cast & Crew

      Ben Platt
      Amy Adams
      Julianne Moore
      Nik Dodani
      Danny Pino
      Colton Ryan
      Steven Levenson
      Steven Levenson
      Benj Pasek
      Justin Paul
      Michael Bederman
      Stacey Mindich
      Brandon Trost
      Anne McCabe
      Dan Romer
      Justin Paul
      Beth Mickle
      Brittany Hites
      Lance Totten

      News & Interviews for Dear Evan Hansen

      Critic Reviews for Dear Evan Hansen

      Audience Reviews for Dear Evan Hansen

      • Jan 20, 2022

        Basically all of the problems with the stage musical, which were mostly obscured by tight staging and excellent performances, are not just more noticeable here they make you seriously question how this was ever so popular. On top of that I'm not sure anyone involved with the production aspects has ever seen a musical before.

        Super Reviewer
      • Sep 25, 2021

        If you're unfamiliar with Dear Evan Hansen or do not consider yourself among the fandom of the Tony-wining Broadway musical, then I would highly recommend watching a 2009 movie called World's Greatest Dad, a film I will be referring to later in this review. It's a smaller indie starring Robin Williams and written and directed by actor-turned-director Bobcat Goldthwait. It also has a very similar premise of a character exploiting the grief of others to try and better their own personal standing by fabricating an introspective life for a high school student who recently took their own life. The exception is that World's Greatest Dad played its heavy content for dark comedy and stinging satire and it never excused the behavior of its lead character as he manipulated the collective sympathies of others for personal gain. As I kept watching Dear Evan Hansen, I kept feeling like someone had attempted to make World's Greatest Dad but played straight and absent the satire, and that was a very bad decision. Evan Hansen (Ben Platt) is a high school senior and has more anxiety disorders than friends. He starts the school year with cast on his arm, the result of "falling" from a tree. Evan writes motivational letters to himself as a therapeutic exercise for his counselor, but Conner (Colton Ryan) steals the paper at school and freaks out when Evan expresses interest in Conner's younger sister, Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever). Conner's only two appearances on screen both involve him shoving, yelling, and threatening Evan. Days later, Conner has taken his life and the only letter his family has found was the "Dear Evan Hansen" paper he snatched away. Conner's parents (Amy Adams, Danny Pino) are eager to know anything about their emotionally troubled and secretive son. They didn't know he had any friends let alone one he would compose his suicide note for. Evan doesn't come clean and instead plays along, happy to provide a false version of their son, one who was bristling with thoughts and compassion he could never properly express. Evan spends more and more time with Zoe, trying to share his own romantic feelings, and getting deeper into his lies. This was a deeply uncomfortable experience for me, and I don't quite understand how fans of the theater show were so moved and uplifted and, frankly, entertained. Maybe all this drama plays better on the stage, though I think many of the same issues I would have with the story would be evidently present for the stage productions as well. The main character is presented as lonely and anxious and depressed and longing to make connections, and this is meant to serve as the emotional explanation for why he leaps at a chance to insert himself into another family and manufacture a false identity about their dead son to score with the girl he's been crushing on from afar for an indeterminate amount of time. Evan Hansen is, quite simply, a monster of a human being. Through tortured coincidence, he is believed to be Connor's only friend, and Evan can at any point clarify this mistake and explain the truth. But he chooses instead to supply a fictional version of Connor that he feels every member of his family needs to hear to feel better about themselves. Evan justifies his actions as kind lies, as helping those in mourning by telling them what they want to hear, what he feels like they need. It's not his place to decide what people need to better grieve, and Evan uses his newly favored position as the rare Rosetta Stone to Conner, the keeper of his secret internal life, to manipulate everyone to like him more. I felt increasingly uncomfortable and upset the longer Dear Evan Hansen progressed with its treacly story, especially as Evan sets his sights on Zoe. It's not as if over the course of his mounting lies that he organically grew closer to this woman who had been a stranger; he has been crushing on her and uses fake emails written by her brother to express his unrequited feelings for her in a song that DEFINITELY does not feel like it was written from a brother to a sister unless we're talking like Game of Thrones territory ("There's nothing like your smile / Sort of subtle and perfect and real"). Both of those scenarios are bad, but one of them is so much worse, and that's the route Dear Evan Hansen goes. The romance is gross, and I knew that the movie was going to let Evan off the hook by the end. Once the truth, the real truth comes out, no one should want anything to do with this person. He says he meant well but he's also the kind of guy who literally uses the fake suicide note, which all the characters believe to be legit, as an emotional cudgel to quiet and shame his biggest doubter as she starts to pick apart his lies. When that moment happened, I wanted to strongly yell at the screen, "Dear Evan Hansen, you dearly suck." There's a worthy message buried somewhere in this movie about reaching out to people who are struggling in the shadows, that mental illness can affect anyone, and that often those who look like they live perfect lives on the surface might just be better at hiding their pain. This is best exemplified in the supporting character of Alana (Amandla Stenberg), the school president who has a raft of anxieties that she keeps to herself. Her moments of vulnerability feel the most honest in the entire movie, and she's trying to allow Conner's death to reach others who might also be struggling, to inspire and save lives through their fledgling organization, The Conner Project. She's the one who is putting in the actual work, both physical and emotional labor, and she's the one who Evan shames with the mistaken suicide note toward the end of the movie. The tone of this movie is amiss from early on, and there's a jaunty musical number where Evan and his one friend comically write fake emails between Evan and Conner. It's played so light and breezy that you'll have to recall this is Evan manufacturing the evidence of his fabrications. Why is this played so flippantly and like we're in on the goofy gag? It's mishandled. The good intentions Evan Hansen the movie, much like the potential good intentions of Evan Hansen the character, are clouded and ultimately sabotaged by its misguided solipsistic approach to grief. And it's taken me this long to talk about another key hindrance and that's the casting of Platt in the title role. Platt originated the role on Broadway in 2015, and yes he wouldn't be the first actor in history playing a high schooler who was clearly older, but they have made a gigantic miscalculation in trying to make Platt appear as a youthful 18-year-old (for the record, he was playing a college student almost a decade ago in 2012's Pitch Perfect). It hit me immediately that Platt does not look right for this role. Immediately. In the awkward attempts to make him more youthful, they have made him look like a shifty undercover cop at a school ("Are you a cop, dear Evan Hansen? You have to tell me if you're a cop."). His pasty skin is so smoothed out as to appear like a shiny mask. His hair is oily, stringy, and looks like a terrible wig, except I have read that it is unfortunately real. Evan Hansen looks like he's wearing a bad hair piece. Platt's performance also left me cold. His mannered, affectless delivery gave me the impression of a sterile serial killer with every fifth line. This may sound overly harsh, but the presence of Platt and his performance dooms this movie's bid for believability. I understand wanting to reach out to the man who left his mark on the role early, but there is a reason that Lin-Manuel Miranda played an older supporting role and not the headstrong young lead for the In the Heights movie adaptation earlier this year. Let the movie be its own thing from the stage show. Then again, there's a rubbernecking fascination with Platt in place, magnifying all the other sins. If there was going to be a bad movie for Dear Evan Hansen, and I question if a good movie was at all possible, then why not go for broke with misapplied creative decisions that make it worse? A lone saving grace for this movie is that the music is actually pretty solid. Justin Paul and Benj Pasek, the Oscar-winning team behind La La Land and The Greatest Showman, can craft some catchy melodies with soaring choruses. If you only listen to the music you might come away with a different opinion of this show and movie. However, the context of what these songs are meant to serve in the larger story besmirches the good feelings you may derive from them. I suggest casually listening to the soundtrack and forgetting the icky context of every tune. Julianne Moore, as Evan's overworked, stressed-out mother, has a nice song toward the very end that feels more honest and pared down than much of the drama allows. I was re-reading my review of World's Greatest Dad, an underrated movie that managed to make my top ten of that year. It reads so closely to this movie but also how this story needs to be told: "The movie satirizes grief culture with sharp acuity… Suddenly their fallen peer has transformed from the kid nobody liked into the wounded soul that touched all their lives. Bullies reexamine their behavior, girls that never would have given him the time of day now immortalize Kyle, and the faculty that wanted to expel him now wishes to rename the library in his lasting memory. This warm, fuzzy gauze of grief is Goldthwait's target. He is satirizing how people turn tragedy into hypocritical attitude shifts. He ridicules the easy revision of history under the guise of collective sympathy. Not every youth is necessarily taken before their time. Not everyone was going to grow up to contribute selflessly to society, making the world a better place to live. Not every youth is deserving of canonization. Some people are just jerks from beginning to end, and Goldthwait proposes we do a disservice when we whitewash reality in the name of kindness and good taste." That sounds like the better version of Dear Evan Hansen to me, except that's not exactly the kind of musical that people hug over and buy a T-shirt or hat to adorn on the drive home. If you're among the fandom for Dear Evan Hansen, I'm sure you'll find enough to enjoy with director Stephen Chbosky's big screen adaptation. I don't want this to sound condescending, but you've likely already built the excuses for the characters and the story and made peace with whatever ethical foibles persist, so whether it's on the stage or on the screen matters little. For those unfamiliar with the popular stage show, I don't know what your takeaway will be but I'm positive this is not the best introduction. Again, Dear Evan Hansen is not the first musical to deal with complicated ethical scenarios and with morally compromised characters trying to do their best with the hands that fate has dealt them. Empathy is a powerful tool for storytelling, and that's what Evan Hansen weaponizes for his own personal gain. I found this movie to be uncomfortable, misguided, and emotionally exploitative just like its hero. If the movie was critical of Evan's bad behavior, then maybe this would be a different matter. It wants you to understand that Evan is hurting and therefore complicated. Well, Evan Hansen, there's a lot of people in this world that are struggling with mental health issues, and suicide ideation, but they don't manipulate and exploit those they deem are most important to them. Sorry Evan, and sorry Dear Evan Hansen, but you can stay waving behind a window for all that I care. Nate's Grade: D+

        nathan z Super Reviewer

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