Some in similar fortuitous creative positions would still heed the challenge to prove oneself, but Miranda gladly settles on following the guidebook verbatim.Īs such, he sticks the landing, largely via finally sourcing the anxieties of his film’s oversized heart from a frenetic, multi-media structure. When we’ve discussed the role of Lin-Manuel Miranda in our popular culture, by the 2020s we were kicking around the same soccer ball some people realize HAMILTON is a weirdo slave owner elegy sooner than others, but it’ll come for all eventually, be it an SNL sketch that spurs a single-day discourse or a 16-year-old taking up seven minutes on TikTok to repeat “old white men are bad” in varying synonyms. After dodging the sophomore slump with aplomb, he’s in the midst of a… Junior junction? A freshman fuck-up? What do you call it when you use the clout of HAMILTON to green light a big-budget adaptation of your first musical and it flops tremendously, so now you’re left in a gap period without a follow-up or a victory lap? The cost of becoming a forefront of cultural industry in the Twitter era is that your ethos and work become over-milked udders in two years flat. This is what keeps Miranda’s bills paid, but it’s also what’s landed him in a creative rut. The ambitions he exalts are so hyper-specific that they loop around to intentional generality: like 10 minutes of “All Too Well,” this fellow student film dares you to not relate to its focus-tested heartaches. Miranda’s directorial efforts in film mimic his vision of the stage, emitting a desire to be loved on a regal scale. Other than the meta dimensions of its muse, the film neatly fits into the streamer’s STRANGER THINGS model of reappropriating set-pieces of older films unavailable on their service and hawking them as new wares: if you’ve never seen PENNIES FROM HEAVEN, prepare for TICK, TICK… BOOM! to blow your mind. Miranda is treating this all as a pet project, but Garfield channels his character’s desperation so fully that you’re guilted into buying the miraculous Oscar buzz. I can’t pin down what’s been holding him back from breaking through as an in-demand talent, but whatever it is making Spider-Man struggle for the limelight, it’s sticky, and it’s the type of career failure that, whether or not Garfield or Miranda are aware of, TICK, TICK… BOOM! pokes at in its precious few honest asides. Andrew Garfield puts in wheelbarrows of effort, but it’s mostly noise. To the benefit and ultimate detriment of theater kids everywhere, this is definitely your guys’ movie. The bevy of Broadway cameos are cute (Joel Grey is looking incredible), and gives the movie a formal definition. I can understand why someone working in entertainment would gravitate to TICK, TICK… BOOM! as a form of validation (the filmmaker and playwright created this work for the exact same reason), but this needy thing, despite desiring to present itself as four-quadrant Netflix entertainment, is an endurance test for anyone who doesn’t annually predict Tony winners. To its credit, the movie does directly speak to those it’s about! TICK, TICK… BOOM! evokes the very feeling of nursing a Modelo in a dark living room with a roomful of “creatives” who live to regurgitate what they’ve most recently consumed as their own philosophy, exclusively speaking in self-medicating platitudes of “I’m developing this” and “we sent out pitches”, with no discernible worldly perspective outside of that of which is shared in any other living room filled with “creatives.” It’s a film in praise of a collective that calls each other geniuses, but homie making your ham & swiss at the corner store could school the most celebrated amongst them on any given second of any morning. Thankfully, being an adaptation of the titular “rock monologue,” we’re spared from a new book of Lin-Manuel Miranda lyrics where he rhymes “mofongo” with “Kamala 2024.” Instead, he’s yassified INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS by way of THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY, and he’s brought along Andrew Garfield for the ride, flying high on his 14th year of being “an up-and-coming actor with promise.” At the very least, Miranda maintained enough self-control to not cast himself as a 29-year-old! Progress for Mr. So, it’s crucial to note that I have zero sentimental attachment to the subject matter of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial film debut TICK, TICK… BOOM! outside of loving ALL THAT JAZZ just like everyone else on this crew does, including the late Larson. I’ve heard exactly one song from Jonathan Larson’s RENT (I’m sure you could guess which), a musical I only know the plot of because of TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE.
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