Dear Evan Hansen review: Mawkish adaptation’s fundamental problem

Adapted from an award-winning stage production, something went fundamentally wrong.

There is a fundamental problem with the movie adaptation of award-winning Broadway smash Dear Evan Hansen.

And that issue is rooted in the film’s misguided casting of Ben Platt as the titular Evan Hansen, an anxious and depressed 17-year-old boy who becomes entangled in another family’s tragedy.

Platt may have seemed like a natural choice – he originated the role onstage and won a Tony for his efforts. And he truly has a wonderful voice that sells the emotion of every note in the film’s grand pop ballads, written by Benji Pasek and Justin Paul, the duo who penned the songs for The Greatest Showman and La La Land.

But Platt first played the role in 2014 when he was 21, as it was still being workshopped. By the time cameras rolled on the movie version, Platt was 27 – and he’s a not a 27 that could pass for 17, he’s a 27 that could pass for 34.

Ben Platt is miscast as Evan Hansen. Picture: Universal

While plenty of older actors have tried to pass for high-schoolers with varying degrees of success, the visual dissonance would’ve been forgiven if Platt’s performance wasn’t so overwrought.

Anyone will tell you that screen and stage performances are wildly different, and stage musicals in particular favour a broader, more mannered acting style so the audience all the way up the back can see you emoting.

That doesn’t work so well when it’s a close-up captured by film or HD cameras and splashed onto a cinema screen – and Platt and director Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower) haven’t calibrated that performance enough, so everything about that character is screaming.

From the darting, hangdog eyes to the whole-body physicality where Platt seems to almost fold in on himself, the character’s tics and mawkish presentation repels more than it creates empathy.

And if you can’t empathise with Evan, then the whole movie falls on its knees because it relies on you being on Evan’s side.

Dear Evan Hansen falls flat thanks to its maudlin sentimentality.

Dear Evan Hansen is a maudlin story. He’s a teenager who writes letters to himself as part of an assignment from his therapist.

When one of those letters is found in the pocket of Connor, a classmate who dies by suicide, Connor’s family (Amy Adams and Danny Pino) mistakes it for a note to Evan, from Connor.

At first, Evan tries to correct them but then he is swept up in their grief and need to believe Connor had a good friend. Evan also happens to have a crush on Connor’s sister, Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever).

Before long, the fake friendship between Evan and the dead Connor becomes an inspirational movement for all those who feel alone.

Kaitlyn Dever is the only actor to make any emotional impact in the off-tone Dear Evan Hansen. Picture: Universal

Despite being up against higher-profile co-stars including Adams and Julianne Moore, who both have flat, thankless mother roles, Dever is the only one to create any real emotional connection with the audience.

The talented young actor who previously impressed in Unbelievable, Booksmart and Dopesick, understands the subtleties and shades necessary in a movie that already traffics in oversized sentiment.

Dear Evan Hansen isn’t completely without merit. The staging is fine and the songs are emotional earworms, even if they don’t impact the scenes that surround them. But that means you don’t actually need to see the movie or Platt’s melodramatic performance.

You can just listen to the soundtrack.

Rating: 2/5

Dear Evan Hansen is in cinemas now

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Originally published as Dear Evan Hansen review: Mawkish adaptation’s fundamental problem