“Dear Evan Hanson” captivates audience, emotional storyline

Dear Evan Hanson: A musical that follows Evan Hansen as he portrays himself to be close to a tragic event. “Dear Evan Hanson” contains many catchy songs that involve the watchers even more. Photo courtesy of Broadway World.

By McLean Grimes

Staff Writer

The movie “Dear Evan Hanson” keeps the watcher entertained throughout the movie and contains many amazing songs.

The movie looks into the life of Evan Hanson, a teen who is isolated from his peers. Evan has severe anxiety so his therapist pushed for him to write letters to himself as an exercise. Connor Murphy, an unliked troubled teen gets ahold of a letter Evan wrote to himself and brings it home. He later committed suicide making his family think that the last thing he wrote was to Evan. Evan, who in reality barely even spoke to Connor, claimed that they were close friends to help the Murphy family cope. Connor’s family grew very close with Evan only for it all to eventually unravel when they found out he was lying the entire time.

“Dear Evan Hanson” was originally a broadway musical that came out in December 2016. It developed into a book and now into a film. Ben Platt, who played Evan in the movie also played him in the musical. As he is currently 28 years old, it was hard to imagine him as a teenager for the film but could have been more passable when on Broadway.

The director, Stephen Chboskty, has also been the director of many other famous movies like “Wonder” and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”. Actors and actresses include Ben Platt, Colton Ryan (Connor Murphy), Kaitlyn Dever (Zoe Murphy), Nik Dodani (Jared Kleinmam), Amandla Stenberg (Alana Beck), Julianne Moore (Heidi Hanson), Amy Adams (Cynthia Murphy), and Danny Pino (Larry Murphy).

The movie was emotional as it was about such a dark topic. Its comedic relief made it an overall enjoyable film to watch. As the viewer saw what Evan was going through, it provided an all around great experience that tugged on their heart.

Each song brought its own meaning to listen to. From the catchy song, “Waving through a Window” about an outsider’s perspective to “So Big / So Small” about Evan’s experience with his dad moving out, the soundtrack made the movie so much better.

“Dear Evan Hanson” is definitely a worthwhile watch. Although the casting could have been more related to the character’s actual age, the acting was amazing and brought life to each character. It brought out many emotions and was an entertaining watch.

Released on September 24th, the PG-13 movie, “Dear Evan Hanson”, is now available in theaters and later on Peacock.