The Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen recently premiered as a movie musical. 

The movie stars include Ben Platt, reprising his role as Evan Hansen, as well as various other actors and actresses including Amy Adams as Cynthia Murphy and Colton Ryan as Connor Murphy.

The story is about a teenage boy named Evan Hansen who gets caught in a web of lies concerning him and a boy who commits suicide named Connor Murphy.

The movie is a beautiful blend of the book and musical, encompassing the theme in a brilliant new way and illustrating a never-before-seen version of the story. 

With new songs and old songs, the movie furthers the message in the original to show not only that nobody is truly alone, but that to some degree everybody struggles in some way.

It may be possible that some might not like this movie, one reason being that certain songs in the musical were either taken out and replaced with other songs or just taken out and replaced by spoken dialogue to get across the same message.

Another reason is the change for the character, Larry, as a stepfather rather than the biological father of Connor.

“I feel like these changes would make the movie awkward. I love all the songs from the musical. They should have not taken any away,” said WJPS senior Katherine Pappas.

However, even with these changes, there are still those who can see the movie’s unique way of portraying the story’s emotions and themes as a not inherently bad direction for the movie 

adaptation. 

“But sometimes the tone of a movie can’t match the tone of a play so it may fit the context never-before-seen better,” said WJPS teacher Mr. Gardner.

The movie is enjoyable, overall while it’s possible to miss the things that were taken out of the movie, it doesn’t ruin the enjoyment of the retelling that this adaptation of the story gives us.

“Music Box Theater – Dear Evan Hansen” by ajay_suresh is licensed under CC BY 2.0