BEN O’GORMAN
IN THE Heights was written by Lin Manuel Miranda the man who wrote the Broadway behemoth Hamilton, so this is a pretty hotly anticipated film.
It is hard to understate just how successful Hamilton was when it opened in 2016. It was sold-out for years. When it finally opened in the West End, tickets on the second hand market were going for £6,000. Miranda is seriously hot property in Hollywood and this, his first play (which opened on stage in 2008 ), was snapped up by a studio years ago.
The story is basic like most musicals. We follow three characters with dreams and love interests who sing and dance around their neighbourhood in New York over a weekend while suffering a heat wave and blackout.
Again, like most musicals, the plot is just a bridge for songs and the songs here are really the stars of the show. Like Hamilton, they are rooted in hip hop and traditional musical theatre but also infected with salsa and the music of Latin America.
At two and half hours it is far far too long. A good edit to bring it down to 90 minutes and it would be a seriously improved film. Several of the songs could easily have been cut as they are quite forgettable (I am listening to the soundtrack as I write this and there are a few tracks I do not recognise and I saw the film last night! ).
That said, several of the great numbers, particularly ’96,000' and the opening number ‘In The Heights’ are really fun and have made their way fully into my music rotation.
The performers are all fantastic, they take the roles with unbridled enthusiasm, without being too grating. Some of the dialogue is a little ‘stagey’ but that is to be expected.
I do think the director, John Cho, deserves most of the plaudits. Over the last year we have had several stage adaptations put on screen (eg, One Night in Miami and The Father ) which suffered by feeling flat, simply plays on a screen. Cho, however, has made this feel really cinematic - a real movie, and a real musical. The big numbers have the spectacle of a West Side Story or a Seven Brides for Seven Brothers number. That is all down to the great direction.
However, if the film had come out in a normal year, would my reception have been a little more cynical? It is, at its heart, the cheesiest of musicals. It has a really lousy framing mechanism of the story being told to some kids (who are very annoying ) on a beach which I would have cut. Overall I could not help but be swept away in the music and visuals. Go see this on the big screen.
