Lin-Manuel Miranda Does Justice to a Legend in tick, tick…BOOM!

When Jonathan Larson’s Rent debuted on Broadway in 1996, there was one thing all audiences could agree on: It was a totally unorthodox entry into the world of musical theater. The show jeered at the very notion of conventional storytelling. Its musical numbers were scrappy and loose. It embraced awkward pauses and performances. Most significantly, it unabashedly presented those affected by the AIDS epidemic with optimism and humanity in a time when vilification was far more common. And it was utterly beloved.
Rent, like its creator, was a success precisely because it defied normalcy. This dissent was hardly surprising: From his eight-years-in-the-making Nineteen Eighty-Four-inspired sci-fi musical Superbia to an affinity for improvising ditties about sugar, Larson was anything but predictable. It’s only fair, then, that his biopic, tick, tick… BOOM! follows the same design.
Perhaps the person best suited to tell Larson’s story is Broadway’s own Lin-Manuel Miranda. Creator of the strange, idiosyncratic, rebellious—and yet absolutely venerated—Hamilton, Miranda knows better than anyone what it’s like to permanently rupture theatrical convention. And even though this is Miranda’s first-ever stab at directing, he knew how to do Larson a great service by confidently throwing cinematic tradition clean out the window.
tick, tick… BOOM! is based around Larson’s one-man show of the same name, which he performed in 1990. It tells the story of his life, and what it’s like to be a struggling, aspiring composer in New York City. (Spoiler alert: It’s not easy). The film is structured around the show itself, performed by a disheveled and charismatic Andrew Garfield. From there, we weave between the show and vibrant flashbacks that illustrate exactly what Jonathan is talking (well, singing) about.
Deciding to structure the film this way was a big risk. By doing so, screenwriter Steven Levenson (who also wrote episodes of Fosse/Verdon and, more recently, movie-musical Dear Evan Hansen) deviates from typical, narrative-focused material and ruptures—even sacrifices—some of its most exciting emotional beats. When Jonathan and his girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Shipp) get in a fight that is the culmination of tension that’s been bubbling under the surface for an hour, for example, we continually cut back to a campy musical number. At two different points when Jonathan is experiencing severe writer’s block, the feeling of oppressive frustration is suspended by a musical number. And then the film ends with a jarringly anticlimactic voiceover.