Praise as absurd as the movie

I noticed last night that Dear Evan Hansen had come to Amazon Prime, and because of a perverse sense of wanting to continue looking at this car crash, I clicked into it.

That's how I was able to see the hilarious description you see here.

Since the print is pretty small, I'll type it out for you:

"The breathtaking Broadway phenomenon becomes a soaring cinematic event as Tony, Grammy and Emmy Award winner Ben Platt reprises his role as an anxious, isolated high schooler aching for understanding ..."

And the part you can't see is:

... "and belonging amid the chaos and cruelty of the social-media age."

Whew.

I almost wonder if this is someone at Amazon taking the piss out of this movie.

If not, this is some of the most florid language I have ever seen unironically applied to a movie. Words like "breathtaking" and "soaring" and "aching" are so purple that you can't read them without laughing. 

The thing I thought was even more ridiculous was the heaping of awards on Ben Platt, because Platt is, hands down, the biggest problem with the movie. I'm sure he was good in this role on stage, when he won his Tony, but his persistence in playing the role of a 17-year-old at age 28 is a decision from which the film never recovers. (Incidentally, Platt's father provided significant funding for this film, and Platt has basically said "Well if I didn't play Evan then this movie probably wouldn't have gotten made." While commendably honest, that's also one of the most damning assessments you can make about the motivations for making this film and the likelihood of it ever succeeding.)

Because this performance is all I have to go on for Platt, it's hard for me to believe he could have also won and Tony and a Grammy. He must have thought this was his chance to get a career EGOT, that terms applied to people (like Lin Manuel Miranda) who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. Sorry Ben, Oscar must have missed putting you on its ballot. (Incidentally, the Grammy and Emmy were both offshoots of his stage performance so that feels like a bit of a cheat.)

Since I've never written about this disastrous film on this blog, referring to it only briefly in a post earlier this year about The Pallbearer, it would seem this would be a good time for an extended evisceration, so you know exactly what's so bad about it. However, I'll let two other things on the internet do that work for me. One is my own review, which you can find here. Far more humorously and extensively, there's the great takedown by whip smart YouTuber Jenny Nicholson, which I will include below. (She's worth watching any time she presses record, even if you've never heard of the thing she's talking about. Brilliant humorist.)