OSCARS 2022: tick... tick... BOOM! (2021)

How long have we been bemoaning the death of the movie musical? The popular narrative has always been that this most glamorous and glitzy of golden age genres fell out of public favor in the sixties. Various attempts to revive the singing-and-dancing movie in the next few decades were mostly met by box office indifference. Yet, here in the year of our lord 2022, three live-action musicals are nominated at the Academy Awards. Lin-Manuel Miranda, the man behind Broadway sensation “Hamilton,” definitely deserves some of the thanks/blame for this particular revival. Miranda would make his feature directorial debut last year with "tick, tick... BOOM!," an adaptation of another Broadway wunderkind's work. In this case, Miranda would transition "Rent" creator Jonathan Larson's autobiographical "rock monologue" to the Netflix small screen and Oscar-qualifying limited-run theater screens. 

The film follows Larson, as a struggling songwriter in the early nineties NYC theater scene. He feels pressured to become a success before his thirtieth birthday, which is nearly here. He is currently workshopping his ambitious sci-fi musical "Superbia," a vision he's having trouble realizing. He obsesses over perfecting his songs, in hopes of impressing his idol, Stephen Sondheim. He attempts to juggles the obligations of his personal life – including his stormy relationship with his girlfriend, Susan – with his work, all while losing more friends to the on-going AIDS crisis. 

The element of "tick, tick... BOOM!" that I found most compelling, which has also received the most praise, is Andrew Garfield's lead performance. The once (and possibly future) Spider-Man invokes the anxieties of nearly being thirty. The intriguingly punctuated title refers to the metaphorical ticking Larson hears, his time to achieve his dream running out. He's always worrying about completing his vision and, even at this young an age, grapples with what his legacy might be. After "Superbia" fails to attract sponsors, he's given the best advice any young creative in crisis can hear: Get to work on the next one. Garfield's frizzy hair and enthusiastic delivery captures the spirit of someone bursting with potential and piled down with pressures. He's also a way better singer and dancer than I would've guessed. 

Onstage, "tick, tick... BOOM!" was a low budget affair with little in the way of setting and only a few performers. This is acknowledged with occasional flashbacks to a stage-bound framing device. Mostly though, Miranda does everything he can to make this story as cinematic as possible. Swooping camera work is employed during an early musical number in a library. Larson's imagination gets away from him at his day job as a waiter, where the diner expands into a Broadway stage. Later, a solo in his workshop is brought to life as a rooftop performance. Probably my favorite bits in "tick, tick... BOOM!" is when Miranda plays with the film medium itself. An impromptu hip-hop number takes on the aspect ratio and grain of a classic rap video. A more nostalgic number later on features multiple cutaways to home movie style recordings. It's obvious Miranda came to directing already very familiar with the perimeters of the format.

While there's many parts of "tick, tick... BOOM!" I admire, it's still, well, theater kid shit. I've been known to enjoy a good rock opera now and again but this kind of musical has never been much my style. The musical numbers here are reliably energetic. I like the improvised dancing in the "Rent" progenitor, where Larson sings about all the roommates he's had in a year. Yet few of the melodies or lyrics stick in my head in any way. At multiple intervals throughout, I found the "look at me!"-ness of it all overbearing. Such as when an argument between Jonathan and his girlfriend is re-enacted as a highly choreographed song-and-dance. Or when the melodrama peaks when Larson's best friend admits he's HIV-positive. I get that subtly and musicals don't traditionally go hand-in-hand but I can only take so much pontificating. 

And it doesn't help that "tick, tick... BOOM!" eventually steps back to reveal itself as a tribute to Larson himself. The songwriter died only five years after his thirtieth birthday, of an undiagnosed heart condition, and never got to see "Rent" become a phenomenon. If the musical is a little overly emotional in its regular mode, it becomes unbearable when gushing about its creator. I'll fully acknowledge that "tick, tick... BOOM!" isn't for me but it still proves to be a fairly entertaining motion picture. Larson's anxieties were easily related to and Garfield embodies them convincingly. Miranda – who says the stage show inspired him to become a songwriter himself – energetically brings this material that doesn't really appeal to me to life. But if this kind of thing is your speed, I bet you'll love it. [7/10]