03:45

Dear Evan Hansen

Actor Ben Platt has a voice like an angel and a forehead that reminds one of Frankenstein. No, I speak not of his looks. This is due to the heavy makeup he's sporting as he reprises his Tony Award-winning performance in the big screen version of the musical "Dear Evan Hansen". Platt's 28 trips around the sun don't preclude him from playing someone younger. Presumably, producers thought the makeup would help. But it lends itself to the messiness of the story because Platt is playing BIG teen pretender Evan Hansen. When emotionally troubled teen Connor Murphy commits suicide, he is found with a letter addressed to Hansen. Hansen himself suffers from near-crippling social anxiety and can't fess up to Connor's grieving parents that the two weren't friends and he actually wrote the note to himself.

So here comes more messiness. Hansen compounds lie upon lie, fabricating a posthumous friendship with Connor which leads to acceptance, social media likes and the social media holy grail: going viral. This film plays out as a Shakespearean-like comedy of errors in some parts, and also as an agonizingly real social media morality play. "Words Fail" is just one of the songs where the lyrics capture the social media driven moment in which we live and how the story plays out. "And it's right there...in front of you. And you want to believe it's true. So you make it true. And you think maybe everybody wants it. And needs it a little bit too."

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