Film critics have given generally positive reviews to Tick, Tick … Boom!, an adaptation of the autobiographical musical by Rent creator Jonathan Larson about a young theater composer who’s waiting tables at a New York City diner in 1990 while writing what he hopes will be the next great American musical. The film marks the feature directorial debut of Lin-Manuel Miranda, who played Jon in the 2014 Encores! Off-Center concert revival. The creative team also includes Steven Levenson (screenplay), Alice Brooks (cinematography), Andrew Weisblum (editing), Alex Di Gerlando (production design), Deborah Wheatley (art direction), and Ryan Heffington (choreography). The cast stars Andrew Garfield (Jon), Vanessa Hudgens (Karessa), Alexandra Shipp (Susan), Robin de Jesús (Michael), Joshua Henry (Roger), Judith Light (Rosa Stevens), and Bradley Whitford (Stephen Sondheim), with Joanna Adler (Molly), and Noah Robbins (Simon).
The Guardian (Peter Bradshaw): Lin-Manuel Miranda gives us an unashamed sugar rush of showbiz rapture and showbiz solemnity in this heartfelt tribute to Broadway talent Jonathan Larson. … Garfield is good at portraying the needy, borderline-desperate world of the theatrical writer: always charming, always on, always looking for creative inspiration, always on the verge of exhaustion, and now trying to absorb the new possibility of disillusion. … This is not a movie which gives its hero a happy ending: there is no opening night for Larson, just a belief that the unending slog will one day be worth it. 4 out of 5 stars.
The Hollywood Reporter (Justin Lowe): Miranda’s approach to Tick, Tick … Boom! lacks a similar sense of immediacy, as if he’s regarding the musical through a haze of nostalgia, seeking to persuade viewers to fall under the creative spell that clearly still lingers for him. It’s not an entirely convincing tactic, although hard-core musical theater fans are likely to find it fairly irresistible. … Miranda handles his directorial role (and a brief cameo) with assured professionalism, foregrounding the characters with fluid camera movement and precise editorial pacing, but it’s a somewhat sterile style, more akin to a concert film than an immersive narrative feature.
The Independent (Clarisse Loughrey): Theatre kids are always a little insufferable. … Still, Tick, Tick… Boom! saves itself from the navel-gazing brink by having both Larson’s writing, and Miranda’s staging of that writing, repeatedly acknowledge the narcissistic insularity of the Broadway world. … The film, as one might expect, is enthusiastically self-referential when it comes to Broadway tradition. Not only is composer Stephen Sondheim (Bradley Whitford with a withering look) treated practically as a living god, but Miranda never throws away his shot (get it?) when there’s a musical reference to be made — to the old, to the new, to his own work. 4 out of 5 stars.
IndieWire (Steve Greene): While framing the action around a recreation (of sorts) of Larson’s original presentation, this Tick Tick Boom uses the freedom of a different medium to cut back and forth into the events that inspired those songs and stories. … The film’s final breakthrough moment of inspiration … points to a film that, even at its highest points, seems to be fighting half of itself. Perhaps that’s why a cherished work from a beloved writer took decades to make it to the screen in the first place. Either way, it’s a reminder of how well Tick Tick Boom works with the pure basics: a man with something to say and a microphone to help him do it. Grade: B-
iNews (Francesca Steele): The show has been structured in two interweaving parts — a literal stage and a more traditional film narrative. … Theatre Jonathan cuts periodically to “real-life” Manhattan Jonathan. … There is sometimes a tad too much meta musical self-referencing: Larson is in dialogue with his younger self and the theatre crowd; Miranda is in dialogue with his younger self and Larson. Occasionally I wondered who was actually speaking to the cinema audience, as the plot got lost in structural conceits. Still, Miranda has made something kinetic and intimate with material not easily adapted for the screen. It is a fan’s tribute, yes, but quite a clever one. 4 stars.
The Telegraph (Robbie Collin): This film adaptation … brilliantly expands Larson’s solo piece into an explosively entertaining vérité rock opera. … Tick, Tick…Boom! has also been crafted with a particular audience in mind. … Yet the luvvie indulgence levels remain impressively low throughout, as Miranda and Levenson keep finding ways to both revel in and deconstruct the story’s inherently theatrical pleasures in uniquely cinematic ways. … If Miranda’s tendency towards showmanship can leave Tick, Tick…Boom! feeling a little insistent in places, it also means the film shares its hero’s jet-propelled determination to do his own thing.
USA Today (Brian Truitt): BOOM! is a moving and joyous exploration of creativity. … Andrew Garfield turns in an amazing, multi-faceted performance as Larson’s semi-fictional avatar in the kind of colorful, fantastical but still realistic New York City landscape that only a musical-theater guru like Miranda could carve out. … BOOM! finds a creative way to ground the more wondrous aspects of musical theater while still keeping its signature wonder. … BOOM! is an entertaining, heart-filling work that showcases two musical geniuses, putting a new spotlight on Larson’s musical legacy and giving Miranda another endeavor to gift us with his unparalleled artistry. 3-1/2 out of 4 stars.
Variety (Peter Debruge): Most audiences don’t care to watch writers struggling for recognition, and the blessing of Tick, Tick… Boom! isn’t that he finds it, but that we observe Jonathan incrementally identifying his priorities and acknowledging the sources he’d draw from in Rent. … What’s refreshing about the debuting director’s approach is that it feels relatively egoless. His style is playful and energetic, often intercutting between multiple threads within a given song or scene, but it doesn’t feel as if Miranda is calling attention to himself so much as trying to open up the show — to give it the wings Jonathan sings about in the final number.
The Wrap (Todd Gilchrist): Even with a dazzling, urgent performance by Andrew Garfield at its center, tick, tick…Boom! needs a more critical or at least more self-aware eye to recreate the kind of scruffy profundity and insight that it must have possessed as a response to decades of bloated Broadway pageantry. … On a level of sheer cinematic flourish, Miranda’s adaptation is a triumph; he really harnesses Larson’s songs for the screen and gives them tremendous life. … tick, tick…Boom! is an auspicious accomplishment, engaging and energetic and affecting, and another reminder that Lin-Manuel Miranda is one of the few artists who’s actually accomplished enough to earn the unfettered luxury of spending all day creating.