My wife and daughter wanted to watch this tonight and at first I was all like UGH but then I saw it had a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes plus I remembered Hamilton was pretty darn great and also I’m part of a family and sometimes that means compromising so I finally said OKAY.
And I’m glad I did! I really enjoyed it.
Above all, this movie is cinematic, not stagey. Loads of real locations, creative shot design, sharp editing, an appealing cast, plus background dancers of all ages, shapes, and sizes creating an authentic NYC feel. And it was quite moving… I frequently found myself wiping away manly tears.
A couple of the songs tried my patience and it’s a long film at 2 hours 23 minutes, but I am still going with two enthusiastic thumbs up.
So glad this has turned out well! I saw a production of the stage show in London a few years ago and loved it (the room was a little unusual - the stage went through the centre, the audience was on either side, both sides facing each other). It’s out next week over here, the whole family is very much looking forward to it.
I noticed a few updates to the lyrics, listening to the new soundtrack - a reference to Donald Trump has been removed, “I got more hoes than a phone book in Tokyo” has been changed, etc, all probably for the best.
I also thought it was great, but would have been even better with about 23 minutes shaved off of it.
The sideways dancing piece could have been cut, for starters. I also though that there wasn’t a lot of chemistry between the characters of Usnavy and Vanessa until the very end. The actors were great; the parts weren’t written to make me feel like they actually liked each other that much.
Regarding the scene that at Clay blurred out, it felt out of place because it was pure fantasy compared to the rest of the movie. I mean they could’ve had them dancing through the street normally like so many of the other numbers and it wouldn’t have made any difference in my opinion.
I was not familiar with the stage version of this but after the movie we immediately started watching a PBS show called In The Heights: Chasing Broadway Dreams. It’s available on YouTube. It’s a one hour show about the production of the show. Was fun to watch! I also saw that Lin-Manuel Miranda reused a few of his buddies from in the Heights in Hamilton.
I’m in! Won’t see it until later today, so I can neither concur nor counter the blurry bits in this thread yet, but that will happen soon enough, I promise you!
(Honest truth, I saw a trailer for this knowing nothing about it, not even that it was originally an LMM stage musical – at first, at least. And it was like a 2-minute trailer that on Youtube as a commercial where I couldn’t wait to click to skip after 15 seconds when it started…and ended up watching the whole trailer because damn it looked good.)
One of the main things I really don’t like in a movie musical is CGI. As I said up top, I love anything real or true so the more fantastical CGI bits go against that. Fortunately, there wasn’t that much of it…
The brief scene of fabric unrolling over the buildings, Usnavi and his buddies drawing lyrical doodles in the air, and the sideways building dance. And those were all relatively short sequences.
I was doing some of my masculine weeping at the start of that scene with Benny and Nina on the fire escape. I just like “let me listen to my block” plus I’ve noticed recently that any time the George Washington Bridge shows up in a movie, the sight of it triggers a rush of nostalgia and emotion in me. So I didn’t mind going along with the rest of that special f/x dance scene.
My favorite song sequences were Abuela’s immigrant story on the subway and the “96,000” song set at the swimming pool which was utterly incredible. What a feat of movie production. Damn!
I like this review quote from the Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern: “How much pleasure can you take? How much joy can you stand without flinching? One way to find out is by watching In the Heights.”
I saw this yesterday and I couldn’t have liked it more. It was basically the perfect experience for me at this time.
I lived 2 months in Washington Heights when I first got to NYC, so it was my first experience of the city. So there was some nostalgic element for me in it.
Then, it’s the first not-for-kids movie we’ve seen in a theater since the pandemic (we are now vaccinated). Moreover, we went to our local “luxury” theater, with wide reclining seats, sigo and a bottle of good wine (having to take the mask on and off between sips didn’t register as an inconvenience).
And the the movie itself. Not only did I find the music fantastic and the plot and dialog endearing by and real. Actually, the sense of place and emotional realism in contrast with such a stylized presentation is part of what makes the movie so special. Anthony Ramos was fantastic, incredibly charismatic and yet vulnerable. What a role.
If I had to find a nitpick it’s the ending. I don’t “buy” the happy ending. All that talk of gentrification and people being pushed out, and Usnavy’s preparation for a journey of return get thrown into the trash for a happy ending that ignores the realities of everything presented so far. 10 years later he has a kid and the neighborhood seems exactly the same. Gentrification has mysteriously stopped and everything is perfect. It’s a slight cop-out, but still not enough to make me not love the movie.
Edit: found out there were significant changes from the show to the film that explain why the slight incoherency above… maybe the film’s framing device is making it a disservice.
Edit 2: remembered another nitpick. For some reason they mispronounce Guernica. Might be a Latino thing, but I don’t think so?
Watched it on the plane flying back from Costa Rica and it was a delight from start to finish. Gotta admit, though, that I also didn’t buy the chemistry between Usnavy and Vanessa. I actually thought she was gonna toss him to the curb after the nightclub scene (which he totally deserved) and go do her own thing.
Favorite scene for me was the carnivale sequence featuring Daphne Rubin-Vega, but really every scene was pretty great.
I finally watched this last night. It leaves HBO Max today (Sunday 7/11/2021) but presumably will be back a few months down the read.
It’s hard not to think of Hamilton, especially with the lead here played by John Laurens/Philip with his distinctive voice delivering rhymes in Miranda’s recognizable style. And there are a few fun Hamilton cameos and Easter eggs, including Miranda of course but also Chris Jackson (GW in Hamilton) as the Mr. Softee driver and the hold music when the dad calls Stanford is the da-da-da taken from “You’ll Be Back.”
But this is a different New York story about place, a slice of life, not an epic life journey entangled with the birth of a country. There are a couple of knockout musical numbers, particularly 96,000 and Carnaval del Barrio. I also cheated by enabling CC to help me keep up with some of the Spanish. Overall, I enjoyed it, and it appears to be a solid cinematic adaptation of the show. I wish I had seen the stage version, but this is a great way to experience more of LMM’s talent.
