Late to the Party: Dear Evan Hansen
And here you thought Cats was the most misguided stage-to-screen adaptation.
When I write a negative review of something, I try really hard not to make it just a ranting hatchet job. Oh, those are fun, don’t get me wrong, but also a little nuance never hurt anyone. It’s worthwhile not just to find a glint of gold in the rubbish, but to acknowledge that, with a few changes, the whole thing could have worked.
Without a bit of joy in my heart, it must be said: absolutely nothing, short of rewriting the entire plot, could have saved Dear Evan Hansen.
Now, to be fair, as a film, it was doomed from the start. Though Evan Hansen was a smash hit Broadway musical, winning several Tony Awards and developing a near cult-like fanbase1, for whatever reason “big on Broadway” doesn’t often result in “$ $ $ $” The rare recent exception was Hamilton, and that’s likely because (a) due to COVID-19 it went direct to streaming, and (b) it was a recording of the play itself, rather than adapted as feature film. As Tom Hooper’s mushrooms-induced adaptation of Cats taught us, squashing a stage musical down into screen-sized makes it feel weird and wrong. It loses the immersive experience of theater, and all you can focus on are distracting details, like Jason Derulo’s failure to wear a cup under his costume, or no one bothering to erase the snot running from Jennifer Hudson’s nose during post.
With Evan Hansen, it’s a different problem: adapting it for film allows audiences who would have normally been swept away by the (perfectly fine) songs to understand how incredibly fucked up the plot is. Even just to read the Wikipedia description of it is to boggle over how offensively misguided it is, made all the worse by its earnestness. The creators really thought they were doing something meaningful to confront mental illness in teenagers, and it can all be condensed down to a single, empty platitude that’s perfect to put on a wristband.
Ben Platt reprises his Tony Award-winning performance as Evan Hansen, and while I agree we have exhausted the subject of how he’s the least convincing high schooler since Stockard Channing in Grease2, it really must be seen to be believed. Wearing a Horshack wig, makeup to smooth out his features, and oversized clothing, he reminds me of no one so much as Martin Short in Clifford. Evan is a shy, awkward man…uh, boy…just go with me on this…and Platt illustrates this with bizarre body language, hunching his shoulders and walking like Raymond Babbitt in Rain Man. Is Evan anxious, or is he on the spectrum? Platt doesn’t seem to know, and I’m not sure he’s ever met an actual teenager in his life.
ANYWAY, at his therapist’s suggestion Evan writes meant-to-be encouraging letters to himself, but they don’t seem to be helping much. One of the letters finds its way into the hands of troubled loner Connor Murphy (Colton Ryan), who reads something in it that inexplicably enrages him, and he storms off, taking the letter with him. Evan spends a few panicked days wondering what Connor might do with the letter and assuming the worst.
As it turns out, it’s the best thing that ever happens to him. Connor commits suicide, and his parents find Evan’s letter, mistaking it as being written by Connor and unsent. On the strength of that one (1) letter, Connor’s grieving mother (Amy Adams) has constructed an entire narrative depicting Connor and Evan as best friends (“His only friend,” she emphasizes), and wants to know more about their relationship.
Like the world’s worst improv exercise, Evan runs with it, concocting an elaborate friendship between the two of them, even creating phony email and letter exchanges, though it’s highly unlikely that teenagers in 2021 would be communicating with each other predominantly via email and letter. His stories depict the violently unstable Connor as a sensitive soul3 who evidently only showed that side of himself to Evan, while terrorizing his own family, particularly younger sister Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever, rising above this mess), who Evan has long had a crush on.
One could say that Evan is doing Connor’s mother a mitzvah, allowing her to imagine a better version of Connor than the one she knew4. But really it’s Evan who benefits from it far more than anyone else. Connor’s parents, desperate to hold onto some part of their dead son, immediately treat him as an unofficially adopted child, and Zoe, the girl of his dreams, sees him in a different light. After Evan sings a song at a memorial for Connor at school, it goes “viral” (that most tiresome of 21st century plot contrivances5), and because this movie exists in an alternate universe he becomes one of the most popular kids in school.
He finally has what he’s always wanted: attention, love, attention, a family, attention, a girlfriend, attention, friends, and attention. Everything’s coming up Evan! It seems like he’d be perfectly fine keeping up this charade (after all, who’s it hurting, other than everyone), if not for classmate Alana (Amandla Stenberg), the sole rational person who sees holes in Evan’s story6. When the jig is up, does Evan face any real consequences for his cruel deception? Other than a few disapproving glares, Reader, he does not. He even still gets the girl in the end.
Though it’s with some difficulty, I buy that this was all more effective on stage. As mentioned, the songs aren’t bad, and Platt sings his 27 year-old heart out. Thank goodness he’s got a good voice, because he couldn’t sell this character if it came with a free toaster. No amount of de-aging makeup or scared little mouse mannerisms could make him seem like anything but the subject of a Dateline story about an adult who cons a family into thinking that he’s their long-lost child.
But in all fairness, Tom Holland couldn’t make Evan Hansen a palatable character. We never really know anything about him other than he’s a very sad and lonely boy, but he seems like, frankly, kind of an unlikable jerk, one who’s openly annoyed and dismissive about his own mother’s concern for him, while at the same time lamenting that he’s all alone in the world. And that’s before Connor finds his letter. After that, at best Evan is opportunistic, using the situation to insinuate himself into Connor’s upper class family, which offers him the attention (and, make no mistake, the wealth) his overworked blue collar mother (Julianne Moore) can’t. At worst, he’s predatory, parlaying his role as an honorary son into a romantic relationship with the emotionally fragile Zoe, who’s conflicted over mourning a brother she very likely hated and feared when he was alive.
Even then, rewriting the main character wouldn’t do much to change the overall distasteful tone of the entire film. Dear Evan Hansen seems to have been written by people who never suffered from a single sad day or moment of doubt in their lives. It plays into the worst kind of empty “Hey kids, we know that things are bad now, but brighter days are ahead!” sentiment, and fundamentally misunderstands the complexities of mental illness. We’re supposed to believe that it’s initially Evan’s anxiety that prevents him from being upfront with Connor’s parents, but as someone with anxiety7 I can tell you that that doesn’t force you to spin detailed fantasies about someone you barely knew to gain favor with that person’s family. That’s called narcissism, but no one’s out there writing heartwarming musicals about narcissists.
To further emphasize the superficial approach taken to mental illness, the movie not-so-subtly implies that if Evan had had a “real” family (a mommy8, a daddy, and a nice house in a good neighborhood), things would have been different for him, which I don’t have the space here to get into how insensitive and flat-out wrong that is. Excusing it all away with the last minute reveal that, awwwww, Connor really was a sensitive soul, so technically Evan wasn’t lying (except he very much was) doesn’t wash away the gross, greasy “I didn’t check to make sure the ham was still good before making a sandwich” aftertaste this all leaves.
Dear Evan Hansen is shameless inspiration porn, suggesting that sometimes it’s okay to benefit from someone else’s tragedy. In a just world, like all con artists who prey on vulnerable people, Evan would be shunned and scorned for his deception9. Instead, he’s given an “it was all worth it in the end” hero’s journey, on his way to a better life that might not have been possible if Connor, a plot device disguised as a person, hadn’t killed himself.
Though let’s be honest, every fanbase can be described as “cult-like” these days.
At least she had the excuse that people just looked older in the 50s from all the smoking and lead paint.
The emphasis on it being a very close and secret friendship suggests some romantic undertones, but no, as the song “Sincerely, Me” emphatically states, “We're close, but not that way/The only man that I love is my dad.” Adding a “no homo” disclaimer only serves to make this whole thing seem like a parody of feel-good nonsense, and yet it most assuredly is not.
Although as a parent myself, I don’t know that I would take much comfort in basically being told “Your child had a kind and sweet side, they just never showed it to you.” Uh, thanks, I guess?
Oh, to live in the fantasy world where some dweeb singing a corny song about being sad would become a viral video instead of footage of white trash hitting each other with folding chairs in a Waffle House parking lot.
Another classmate helps Evan in the deception, which means there are at least two sociopaths in this heartwarming film.
I have the Xanax prescription to prove it!
Let me reiterate, he does have a mommy, whom he bitterly resents for committing the crime of being a nurse who often has to take double shifts to support their household.
You might be thinking “Aw, but Gena, he’s just a kid,” but let me point out that con artist Frank Abagnale, Jr., the subject of Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, started his scheming when he was 15, and to my knowledge none of his victims included grieving parents.