{"id":255653,"date":"2021-05-21T18:00:13","date_gmt":"2021-05-21T15:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/crowdpleaser-feels-big-but-dreams-bigger-film\/"},"modified":"2021-05-21T18:00:13","modified_gmt":"2021-05-21T15:00:13","slug":"crowdpleaser-feels-big-but-dreams-bigger-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/crowdpleaser-feels-big-but-dreams-bigger-film\/","title":{"rendered":"#Crowdpleaser Feels Big, But Dreams Bigger \u2013 \/Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Crowdpleaser Feels Big, But Dreams Bigger \u2013 \/Film<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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\"in<\/p>\n

When In The Heights<\/em> <\/strong>opened on Broadway in 2008, it was a scrapp<\/a>y little show that could, the product of a college sophomore\u2019s wild ambitions and talent that had been honed and tweaked for years before finally hitting the Great White Way. But more than two decades after Lin-Manuel Miranda<\/strong>\u00a0initially conceived of In the Heights<\/em> during his second year at Wesleyan, Miranda\u2019s profile has far exceeded anything that he created pre-Hamilton<\/em>. So returning to Miranda\u2019s first stage musical made back when he was young, scrappy, and hungry<\/a> (I\u2019m sorry, that will be the first and last one) with a glossy big-budget adaptation from the director who made Crazy Rich Asians<\/em> is\u2026a little weird, to say the least.<\/p>\n

This is a musical that is bursting with energy, and vigor, and the raw imperfections of youth. It\u2019s a little rough around the edges, but that\u2019s part of its appeal. The feature film adaptation of\u00a0In the Heights<\/em>\u00a0tries to recapture these rough edges, but it does it with a bit of the glitz and glamour that comes with every Hollywood musical. The end result is a movie musical that feels both a little too imperfect and too perfect, but everything is just so joyous and full of spectacle that you don\u2019t notice much.<\/p>\n

Set in the close-knit community of Washington Heights in New York City,\u00a0In the Heights<\/em> follows\u00a0Usnavi de la Vega (Anthony Ramos<\/strong>, ready to be the next big heartthrob), a bodega owner who dreams of buying his father\u2019s old bar back in his home country of the Dominican Republic. Usnavi and \u201cAbuela\u201d Claudia (a tremendous\u00a0Olga Merediz<\/strong>) are the unofficial heart of the Washington Heights community, with the entire neighborhood lining up to get coffee at Usnavi\u2019s bodega every morning with a cheery greeting or a randy joke, and regularly piling into Abuela\u2019s house for dinner.<\/p>\n

Among those regulars are Sonny (Gregory Diaz IV<\/strong>), Usnavi\u2019s younger cousin who helps run the bodega;\u00a0Benny (Corey Hawkins<\/strong>), Usnavi\u2019s best friend who works at the local taxi dispatch but dreams of starting his own business; Kevin Rosario (Jimmy Smits<\/strong>, always a joy to watch), the owner of the dispatch where Benny works and the father of Nina (a wonderfully vulnerable\u00a0Leslie Grace<\/strong>), the local pride and joy of the Heights who has just returned from her semester at Stanford after secretly dropping out. And of course, there\u2019s the restless Vanessa (Melissa Barrera<\/strong>, oozing charisma), the neighborhood beauty whom Usnavi nurses a crush on and who always gets her coffee free at the bodega.<\/p>\n

In the Heights<\/em> follows a loose narrative around these characters, but it\u2019s more of a snapshot of a rich, bustling neighborhood that is in danger of \u201cdisappearing,\u201d as Usnavi narrates to a young girl on a serene beach at the beginning of the film. The framing device of Usnavi telling this story to the group of children on a beautiful beach is one of the weaker choices Chu and screenwriter\u00a0Quiara Alegr\u00eda Hudes<\/strong> make, a halfhearted attempt to lend a fairytale feel to the film. In addition to stretching the already baggy film on for longer than necessary, it also creates an unintentional distance between the audience and the story, which is not what you want for\u00a0In the Heights<\/em>, a musical that thrives on the energy of the here and now. While the framing device helps to give a heightened sheen to the story that Usnavi tells \u2014 allowing for the splashy musical numbers where people dance on walls, and fun stylized graphics that Chu throws in to liven up a musical sequence \u2014 you don\u2019t necessarily need that. As a musical, there\u2019s already a built-in artifice to it. This is a movie where people burst into song, after all.<\/p>\n

But the songs, oh, the songs. Miranda\u2019s music and lyrics hit as hard as they did on stage. \u201cIn the Heights\u201d is a spectacular opening number that brings the music of the city to life \u2014 the ringing of a doorbell, and the clicks of women\u2019s heels on pavement building up the beat and rhythm of the song as Ramos and company sing and rap along. \u201cNo Me Diga\u201d is a bubbly little number in the hair and nail salon run by the outrageous gossip Daniela (a dynamite\u00a0Daphne Rubin-Vega<\/strong>), where Vanessa works alongside the air-headed flirts Carla and Cuca (Stephanie Beatriz<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Dascha Polanco<\/strong>, both extremely fun). This sequence has some of the film\u2019s most delightful moments \u2014 including a Chaplin-esque \u201cnail dance\u201d \u2014 and best represents the film\u2019s marriage between the raw energy of the original musical and Chu\u2019s penchant for visual flair.<\/p>\n

There are several other standout musical sequences that play into the big, splashy expectations for this film: \u201c96,000\u201d (a song very reminiscent of a later Miranda\u00a0Hamilton<\/em> number), which features a gorgeous\u00a0Busby Berkeley-esque\u00a0pool sequence; the Merediz-led \u201cPaciencia Y Fe\u201d is a beautiful experimental number that showcases Chu\u2019s talent with dance; and \u201cWhen the Sun Goes Down,\u201d a dreamy duet between Nina and Benny where they twirl along the brick walls of a walk-up. But Chu is surprisingly subdued when it comes to embracing the visual language of musicals. He often chooses to stay in close-up and lingers on little details of the New York neighborhood, rather than letting the dancers shine in wide shots. And the choreography for the songs often feels spontaneous and unpolished, almost like a callback to Chu\u2019s\u00a0Step Up<\/em> days. It feels like Chu wants to bring a realism to the film that works against that heightened aspect built into the musical \u2014 perhaps in an attempt to capture that vivacity of the original stage production. While the spontaneity of the dance numbers ultimately works in Chu\u2019s favor, the frequent close-ups do not, and it makes me wish he showed the potential for splashy musicals that he did in his\u00a0Step Up<\/em> movies<\/a>.
\nBut despite its minor missteps,\u00a0In the Heights<\/em> is an unabashed delight. The cast all give deeply felt, deeply fun performances, with Ramos,\u00a0Merediz, and Barrera as standouts.\u00a0In the Heights<\/em> is a celebration of a rich culture and a group of dreamers, who are messy and full of contradictions, but whose emotions always ring true.<\/p>\n

\/Film Rating: 7 out of 10<\/strong><\/p>\n

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“#Crowdpleaser Feels Big, But Dreams Bigger \u2013 \/Film” When In The Heights opened on Broadway in 2008, it was a scrappy little show that could, the product of a college sophomore\u2019s wild ambitions and talent that had been honed and tweaked for years before finally hitting the Great White Way. But more than two decades…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":255654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/d13ezvd6yrslxm.cloudfront.net\/wp\/wp-content\/images\/ITH-TRLR2-0009-768x322.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1568,89816,7598,19730,19731,1553],"class_list":["post-255653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-featured-stories-sidebar","tag-in-the-heights","tag-movie-reviews","tag-musical","tag-stage","tag-warner-brothers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}