Tick, Tick...Boom!

Director: Lin-Manuel Miranda
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp, Robin de Jesús, Joshua Henry, Vanessa Hudgens, Judith Light, Jonathan Marc Sherman, Mj Rodriguez, Ben Levi Ross, Bradley Whitford, Laura Benanti, Richard Kind
Running Time: 121 min.
Rating: PG-13 

★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)

When Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda was 17 he saw Rent on Broadway and he's credited it for showing him it was entirely possible to write a show that can be both contemporary and important, connecting with audiences on an entirely different level. It was the perfect story that came along at just the right moment, performed by a once-in-a-lifetime cast that seemed to truly grasp how important it was. This was all heightened by the fact that its creator Jonathan Larson never lived to see the impact his work would leave, shockingly passing away before the curtain came up. Chris Columbus' 2005 big screen adaptation of his musical may have reassembled the original cast, but it somehow failed to do anything else, falling considerably short in recapturing any of the elements that made the musical special. It also came too late, hinting that maybe Rent is a story that resides in a very specific time and place in our culture, for which we should probably be grateful.

If Miranda says there would be no In the Heights without Jonathan Larson, it seems only fitting that his feature directorial debut would be an adaptation of Larson's Tick, Tick...Boom, his semi-autobiographical rock musical that preceded Rent and detailed his struggles as a starving artist in early 90's New York City trying to get his Superbia musical off the ground. Screenwriter Steven Levinson (of the infamous Dear Evan Hansen) incorporates real details from Larson's life while alternating between stage monologues, rehearsals of the show, and a more traditional narrative detailing him and his friends trying to make it. If that sounds like a mess, it is. But it's also pretty ambitious and Garfield's frenetic, endlessly energetic performance proves to be an almost fighteningly accurate recreation of what we've seen of the real Larson. 

Those who love this film will really, really love it since it's all very inside and feels made exclusively for those within the New York theater community. But that doesn't mean others won't lose patience with some of the musical numbers or find themselves lost as a number of cameos and references fly over their heads. Miranda's clearly going against the grain by making an artsy, abstract take on biopics in the spirit of Larson's work, looking to appeal to the hardest of hardcore theaterheads. Unfortunately, Tick, Tick...Boom! isn't Rent and there's a reason the latter is so revered while the former was a stepping stone. To Miranda's credit, he doesn't shy away from that, but it does result in some hit-or-miss musical numbers that may have you antsy for Larson to start writing what's next already. This is the journey to get there, and while it's a slog at times, it's meant to be a parable on perserverance and failure, with Miranda depicting Larson's brilliance and obsessive self-destruction with a painful, unflinching honesty.

It's 1992 and Jonathan Larson is performing his Tick,Tick...Boom! monologue at New York Theatre Workshop with friends and Superbia cast members Roger (Joshua Henry) and Karessa (Vanessa Hudgens). Hearing a ticking clock in his head as he approaches his 30th birthday, Jonathan frets that time may be running out in his quest to become a successful musical theater composer like his idol Stephen Sondheim (Bradley Whitford). Preparing to workshop Superbia while working at the Moondance Diner in SoHo, he dismisses former roomate and actor Michael's (Robin de Jesús) suggestions that he follow him into a more secure career in corporate advertising. With rent overdue and the electricity about to be shut off, Jonathan also faces the possibility his dancer-turned-teacher girlfriend, Susan (Alexandra Shipp) could be moving if she accepts a new job opportunity. And now, after 8 years toiling over Superbia, his creative obsession reaches its boiling point, damaging all of his personal relationships in the process.   

What's most surprising about the depiction of Larson is how both emotionally draining and inspiring he can be. Garfield nearly leaps through the screen with his infectious enthusiasm, establishing him early as an artist with a one-track mind that won't let anything or anyone get in the way of his vision. At times it crosses far over the line into selfishness (especially in regard to Susan), but there's rarely a moment where he doesn't seem entirely relatable. The film's at its best when residing completely in Larson's head, fixating on the idea that time's running out. It sadly proves to be true, as in the end he had just barely enough, but not nearly what he should have gotten. The same could be said for many of his friends, with the AIDS epidemic bubbling under the surface for much of the film's narrative before playing a bigger role in the last act.

The time and setting of the early 90's NYC theater scene, like the protagonist himself, has so infrequently been given attention on the big or small screen that Miranda has the advantage of immersing us in a mostly unexplored world. How many who aren't already familar with it will even be interested is the bigger question, especially since the first hour is so shaky. The cutting between the Larson monologue, Superbia musical numbers and dramatic scenes are almost dizzying and an argument could be made that only two of those numbers really work. The first, "Sunday" features a parade of Broadway legends such as André De Shields, Bebe Neuwirth, Joel Grey, Chita Rivera, Phylicia Rashad, Bernadette Peters and Brian Stokes Mitchell filling the Moondance Diner. A later number, "Therapy" sees Garfield and Vanessa Hudgens brilliantly singing and pantomiming the crazy trajectory of Jonathan and Susan's relationship. 

Interestingly enough, Hudgins' character is mostly a background player up until that number, one of the film's very best, where she just lets loose and does more in explaining the Jonathan-Susan relationship than most of the scenes Alexandra Shipp shares with Garfield, as those moments never really rise above the trope of ignored girlfriend of genius artist. The bond between Jonathan and best friend Michael carries more resonance, as does Bradley Whitford's small but memorable turn as Stephen Sondheim, providing the perfect swan song, with the legend's mentorship playing a key role in pushing Jonathan forward. Judith Light is also very good as his agent, Rosa Stevens, who honestly but compassionately gives him the exact advice he needs, regardless of how difficult it may be to hear.     

The fear that everything Jonathan's worked toward for the past eight years may have amounted to nothing, reaches this crescendo in the last act, only to kind of fizzle out, culminating in a musical number that just seems to go on and on and on. By this point, we're ready for the breakthrough. We want him write Rent, but the script's so hyper-focused on failure after failure that when his creative epiphany does come, it's mentioned almost in passing, as a backdrop to his tragic death. 

It never feels like we get a chance to celebrate anything in this picture, which may exactly be the point. Still, it seems so much was put into conveying his struggles and squeezing in as many musical numbers as possible, that things got a little muddled along the way. Despite being a wildly mixed bag of questionable choices, Tick,Tick...Boom! is still entirely watchable and one of the few near-misses I'd actually be willing to give another look at down the road. That's mainly because Garfield is such a revelation as Larson, remaining intensely focused and engaged even while the film drags its feet, frequently feeling far longer and more exhausting than its running time suggests.

Spring Breakers

Director: Harmony Korine
Starring: James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, Gucci Mane, Heather Morris, Jeff Jarrett
Running Time: 94 min.
Rating: R

★★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)

What starts out looking like it's going to be Project X meets Girls Gone Wild, Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers quickly evolves into a visual ballet of debaucherous hedonism dripping in violence and scathing social commentary. Gorgeously shot and masterfully edited, it's the first film of 2013 that deserves to be remembered come awards time, especially in key technical categories. But the bigger question is how Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez and Ashley Benson will explain this to their parents. Hopefully, they'll do it by telling them they actually participated in the creation of art. Their casting isn't a stunt, as within minutes you completely forget who you're watching and are transported down a sadistic hellhole you know from the beginning can't end in a real victory for anyone.

For those like me who are only mildly aware of these actresses by the their squeaky reputations, the film accomplishes its goal of temporarily minimizing (if not outright eliminating) the eye rolling that usually accompanies the mere mention of their names. When you make serious choices you get taken seriously. At least for 90 minutes. But the most pleasant surprise is how no concessions are made to make this more mainstream or commercial because of who's in it and what it's about. And it isn't just "about" a spring break gone very bad. It feels bigger than that. And badder. The notion that youth is wasted on the young has never rang as true as it does here.

Longing to escape their boring, small-town existence, friends and college students Faith (Gomez), Candy (Hudgens), Brit (Benson) and Cotty (Rachel Korine) aim to earn enough to go on spring break. Falling short on funds, but armed with squirt guns and a hammer, a ski-masked Brit and Candy end up robbing a fast-food restaurant with Cotty as their getaway driver. As the youngest and most inexperienced, the naive, religious Faith is like a baby deer caught in headlights, but agrees to go on the trip anyway for the experience. It's an experience that goes south in a hurry as the girls drink, do drugs and engage in wild sexual behavior before being arrested and falling in with a drug dealing, murderous rapper named Alien (James Franco) who crosses the wrong people. The girls came for the memories and they'll get them, provided that they're able to live long enough to tell anybody about it.

The exact moment when the movie starts to really become something is when the girls are bailed out of prison and step outside to meet the man responsible for it. They now belong to Alien. Brit, Candy and Cotty, who enjoyed robbing the restaurant entirely too much, are already ripe for the picking by the time this thug gets his claws into them, and they're more than willing to give his dangerous and exciting criminal lifestyle a test drive. Faith is a far different story, and much of that is laid out in the film's opening minutes when she's lectured by her youth pastor (pro wrestler Jeff Jarrett, surprisingly believable) about the sins she's unknowingly about to engage in with her delinquent friends.

Casting Gomez as a girl torn between a religious upbringing and desperately wanting to fit in was probably an easy call, but an inspired one nonetheless. She also looks all of about 12, which makes the seemingly angelic and uncorruptable Faith's potential descent into hedonism all the more shocking and disturbing when it arrives. While her heart's really not into it, the other three are clearly further along the path to amorality and one of the film's biggest questions is who decides to take the bus home and who stays back to play the odds that they'll survive when the bullets start flying.

Calling a group of actresses are interchangeable is usually considered insulting but here it's a compliment since each of them perfectly fulfills their specific requirement for the story. Korine moves them as game pieces across his board with none upstaging any of the others as they work in synchronized harmony right up until the end, which comes sooner for some than others. By the time we get to that point, it's clear who the standouts are. Of the four, Hudgens and Benson stand to get the biggest career bump from this while Gomez will likely revert back to being Selena Gomez, and the largely unknown but shockingly good Rachel Korine already has a great gig appearing in her husband's movies. In a perfect world, these actresses would make choices as captivating as this every time out but the reality remains that true risk taking roles don't come along often enough. Hopefully, it's not just a one-off.

But it's the unrecognizably grilled-out, cornrowed James Franco steals the whole thing out from under all of them with his craziest, most immersive performance yet, which says a lot considering his career trajectory both on and off the screen. Looking like a cross between rapper Riff Raff and Kevin Federline, his Scarface-obsessed Alien alternates between being completely terrifying and downright hilarious. It combines the best of all Francos, proving that when he gets serious about disappearing into a role, few are more interesting or as far-reaching as a performer. You can't even believe it's him, and as uphill a battle as it seems to be, a supporting nomination definitely seems worth fighting for.

Alien's arrival marks the picture's transition into a hallucinatory dream, or more accurately, a feverish nightmare. Much of this can also be attributed to Korine's editing, which  seamlessly interweaves flashbacks and flashforwards into key scenes, culminating in the film's most visually stunning sequence, as an oceanfront piano singalong to Britney Spears' "Everytime" is intercut with a blood-soaked killing spree. When people talk about this movie, it'll be that montage and these sun-drenched images they're referring to. Credit cinematographer Benoit Debie for lensing the best looking film of the year, as well as composer Cliff Martinez and Skillrex for providing the hypnotic score. But the only thing more exhilarating than watching that scene might be imagining Spears watching it, with all the satiric nuance behind its usage flying right over her head. She should pay Korine for using it. When Alien calls Spears a "great girl" we have no doubt he absolutely means it, even as we're certain the movie does not.

The biggest hurdle facing the film is figuring out the audience it's supposed to be for.  But does that even matter? Teen girls naturally gravitate toward these actresses while only serious adult film buffs would be interested in the latest directed by Harmony Korine, whose work is legitimately eccentric and inaccessible to put it lightly. He cleverly negotiates his way around this, tricking the former into watching a highbrow arthouse film, while still reassuring the latter that, despite its cast and plot, they've come to the right place. The casting is less a stunt than a brilliantly controlled experiment, placing actresses who are hard to take seriously under normal circumstances into the hands of a filmmaker who forces us to at gunpoint.

Asking how far as a culture we're willing to go while also questioning just how much America's parameters have changed, the biggest argument against the film is that despite its highly stylized aesthetic, it's still just about what it's about: spring break. And that's exactly it, as the closing voiceover disturbingly reminds us. Spring Breakers pushes Ebert's famous theory that a movie's not what it's about, but how, to its breaking point. And then it dares to push some more.