Film critics have given mixed to negative reviews to the screen adaptation of the 2015 Tony-winning musical Dear Evan Hansen, which premiered September 9 at the Toronto International Film Festival and is scheduled for wide release on September 24. Directed by Stephen Chbosky, the screenplay is by the stage show’s librettist Steven Levenson, with songs by the show’s composers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. The remaining creative team includes Brandon Trost (cinematography), Anne McCabe (editing), Beth Mickle (production design), Brittany Hites (art direction), and Lance Totten (set decoration).
The Broadway show’s star Ben Platt reprises his performance in the title role. The cast also includes Julianne Moore (Heidi Hansen), Kaitlyn Dever (Zoe Murphy), Amy Adams (Cynthia Murphy), Danny Pino (Larry Murphy), Colton Ryan (Connor Murphy), Amandla Stenberg (Alana), and Nik Dodani (Jared).
Deadline (Valerie Complex): Dear Evan Hansen could have been enjoyable, but there are too many glaring problems that can’t be ignored for the sake of entertainment. … It is an irreparably problematic piece of work that manipulates the audience by forcing them to feel sympathy for a pathological liar whose own mental illness is exploited. … The story is convinced it’s making a bold statement about mental illness, finding community and class structures, but it feels inauthentic and shallow. … This film won’t inspire empathy or sympathy but disdain and indifference.
Empire (Ian Freer): A nexus of millennial hot-button topics. … Stephen Chbosky’s adaptation tackles these ideas with sensitivity through a clutch of great tunes, by turns funny and touching, but emerges too dramatically inert to truly satisfy. … When it moves away from the music, Dear Evan Hansen feels on less certain ground. … [Platt] gives a strangely stage-y performance; he also simply looks too old to be a convincing teenager (he’s 27). He’s strong in song, not so much elsewhere — much like the movie as a whole. 3 out of 5 stars
Hollywood Reporter (Michael Rechtshaffen): The production boasts its share of tenderly crafted moments. But … a weakness for the formulaic, combined with a noticeably weighty running time, continually bumps up against the film’s many fine points. … The absence of a more cohesive unifying tone is noticeable in director Chbosky’s nonmusical renderings, which also occasionally struggle to find an agreeable balance between the theatrical and the melodramatic. Despite the pesky distractions, Platt and company still manage to deliver the right message at precisely the right time.
IndieWire (Tina Hassannia): The film should be a hit. … Unfortunately, Stephen Chbosky’s poor directorial choices cancel out the rousing success Dear Evan Hansen was on stage, with a cascade of glaring distractions that continuously point out the artificiality of the genre. … Dear Evan Hansen would have been a much more well-rounded mainstream movie about mental health if the writers had abandoned the original’s artifice and adapted it for a more realistic genre, like a dramedy. But then it wouldn’t have been as exciting or life-affirming without the Oscar-bait songs, right? … right. Grade: D
Variety (Peter Debruge): In a year with a well-above-average number of musicals, … Dear Evan Hansen is the farthest below average in terms of actual merit: a curve-crashing after-school special, dressed up with so-so songs. … Dear Evan Hansen rubbed me wrong onstage, and it doesn’t sit well with me now, despite a few smart improvements to the material. Baked into its DNA are three of the sins I find most irksome about young-adult entertainment. … The team behind the film haven’t necessarily fixed all that was wrong with the show, but they’ve been listening, at least, and that’s a start.
The Wrap (Steven Pond): If you have a heart and any kind of tolerance for musicals, at some point you will surrender to Dear Evan Hansen, to Ben Platt and to a sterling cast of actors. … It’s messy at times and melodramatic at others, and its treatment of mental health issues is not the most nuanced, but those feel like quibbles given the joy you can find in its best moments. … Even if you go in with reservations, even if you don’t succumb to its most extravagant moments, it sneaks up on you. Go ahead, smile or ache or shed a tear — you are not alone.