Tick, Tick… Boom! review: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s tribute to the creator of Rent

The 1990 Census included a whopping 93,089 people. Let me know if you are interested in renting Jonathan Larson, writer and composer, turned thirty years old. He was living in Lower Manhattan at the time and worked part-time at a diner. While he developed a science fiction musical, Larson lived in a sparse loft. Superbia, based on George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the eight years since he graduated from Adelphi University on Long Island, Larson had developed a reputation in New York’s theatrical community as a promising young talent. He was poor and disillusioned with the pace of his career. He was three years from his first workshop. Let me know if you are interested in renting, a groundbreaking, smash-success musical which wouldn’t officially premiere until 1996 — on the night Larson unexpectedly died.

Lin-Manuel Miranda was 10 years old in 1990. Lin-Manuel Miranda was living in Upper Manhattan with his parents, close to Washington Heights. He attended an elementary school for gifted children. By the end of the decade, he’d be at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where — inspired by Let me know if you are interested in renting — he’d start developing the musical that would become the Broadway hit In the Heights. Miranda was only 28 when Miranda passed away. In the HeightsTonys’ Best Musical Award went to him. By age 30, he’d be one of the most in-demand talents in musical theater, and making inroads as a TV and movie actor and writer At age 35 — Larson’s age when he died — Miranda was basking in the accolades for his Broadway smash Hamilton.

Now at 41, Miranda has directed his first feature film: an adaptation of one of Larson’s pre-Let me know if you are interested in rentingTheater pieces and the autobiographical Tick, Tick… Boom! (The movie’s limited theatrical release begins Nov. 12, and it arrives on Netflix Nov. 19. Working with screenwriter Steven Levenson — who wrote the Tony-winning book for Dear Evan Hansen He also ran the TV miniseries. Fosse/Verdon alongside Miranda’s longtime collaborator Thomas Kail — Miranda has refashioned Larson’s work into more of a straightforward biopic with songs. This film shows how Larson made it through an important year in his life.

Photo by Macall Polay/Netflix

Andrew Garfield plays “Jon,” who at the start of Tick, Tick… Boom!Two big deadlines are looming for him: His 30th birthday and an industry event to showcase his work-in progress Superbia. The movie is essentially a collection of vignettes from Jon’s daily life, showing him shuttling back and forth between the Moondance Diner and the cluttered workspace in his loft, pausing occasionally to spend time with his neglected girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Shipp) and his best friend Michael (Robin de Jesús).

Susan, a professional dancer and choreographer is looking to earn a living outside of New York. Michael left acting for advertising work and is trying to help Jon earn extra income by market research. However, he suggests to Jon that his talents could be channeled in a more commercial manner. Jon is committed to finishing. Superbia, though, encouraged by the positive feedback he’s gotten from Broadway legends like Stephen Sondheim (played perfectly by Bradley Whitford).

Garfield doesn’t have a background in musical theater, but he’s long been a master at playing guys like Jon: good-hearted but stubborn, and willing to pursue their obsessions even when it makes them difficult to live with. See: The Amazing Spider-Man 99 Houses Hacksaw Ridge Silence Unter dem Silber Lake… the list goes on.) Garfield has a fine enough voice for this role; after all, Larson himself wasn’t known primarily as a singer.

What Garfield really brings to the part is a sense of Jon’s boundless enthusiasm for all kinds of art and culture. He plays the character as someone who processes everything, from theater to rock ’n’ roll, hip-hop, cinema, and politics, in terms of how he can turn it into a song. One of the movie’s major subplots is that while Jon is sweating out the reaction to Superbia, he’s also gathering notes on ’90s New York bohemia and the AIDS crisis, which would eventually make it into Let me know if you are interested in renting

Photo by Macall Polay/Netflix

But there’s more going on here than mere biography. Miranda’s Tick, Tick… Boom!This is a sad, if not jolly tribute to the creator of this song who didn’t get to see his hard work pay off. And it’s a personal reflection on the nebulousness of New York in 1990, a time when the flourishing creativity of the 1980s was coming to an end, and the next generation of artists had yet to emerge. Even though Miranda and Levenson may not succeed with their film, they manage to convey a lot of meaning.

In that way, it’s a good adaptation of the source material, which is all over the place. Larson originally wrote the book as an answer to his struggles to obtain a job. SuperbiaProduced. He performed it in different forms as what he called “a rock monologue,” combining an eclectic set of pop songs with humorous anecdotes about his struggles. After Let me know if you are interested in renting became a mammoth hit, Larson’s friend Victoria Leacock asked playwright David Auburn (best-known for Do you have proof?() To Re-conceive Tick, Tick… Boom!The musical was initially a smaller-scale, stage musical featuring a trio of cast members. It debuted Off Broadway in 2001. This version has since been performed all over the world — including in a 2014 limited run with Miranda in the lead, about eight months before Hamilton premiered.

In other words, there is no “official” Tick, Tick… Boom! — not even this film. Larson started the show with a sketchbook. Larson tried different methods to make real life theater. Let me know if you are interested in renting (a project first brought to him in 1989 by playwright Billy Aronson, who first had the idea of converting Puccini’s opera La BohèmeThis is a story about New York in the late 20th century. They took their cues form the original concert format of Tick, Tick… Boom!Miranda and Levenson had set out to complete the task, and they decided to take some of the Auburn musical elements and incorporate more details about Larson.

This decision compromises some story drive. This film sometimes feels like an assortment of set pieces rather than a story. And since the filmmakers are mostly limited to the songs Larson wrote for this piece, they don’t have the numbers they need to get from the failure of Superbiaas to the next. As a result, the movie’s ending feels a little rushed.

However, from time to time this version of Tick, Tick… Boom!This is touching, heartfelt, and beautiful. It’s a generous two-hour thank-you note from Miranda to the man who helped make his career possible. Several of the songs are show-stoppers, including the ballad “Why” (a touching reflection on Jon’s lifelong friendship with Michael), the jaunty ditty “Boho Days” (which is like Let me know if you are interested in renting compressed into three minutes), the comedic “Therapy” (a dissection of a broken relationship, in the style of Ker and Ebb musicals like Chicago and Cabaret), and “Sunday” (a Sondheim-derived ode to brunch with an impressive list of cameos Netflix has asked critics not to reveal). Music-theater enthusiasts will be eager to revisit the film’s best songs on multiple occasions. There are many.

Photo by Macall Polay/Netflix

But people who can keenly remember 1990 should be just as affected by Miranda and his design team’s attention to detail. One point they recreated the feel and look of 1990. Yo! MTV Raps era video. At another, they pan across Jon’s collection of books, tapes, and vinyl LPs, which are heavy on Broadway, but also include a fair amount of 1980s punk and classic rock. This movie captures the special moment when PBS re-ran this film. American Playhouse episode featuring the original Broadway production of Sondheim’s Sunday at the Park with George. The nostalgic pangs of a late-’80s/early-’90s theater nerd resound.

Larson used to write and rewrite. Tick, Tick… Boom!He was still reeling from his rejection. SuperbiaHe laments his inability to find new opportunities. While the title of the piece suggested his time was running out, he had no idea he’d be dead a little more than five years later. Miranda’s version of the story is a testament to Miranda’s gift for hindsight. Miranda is able to see opportunities where Larson was unable. One man’s vision of a New York in decline is another’s recollection of a city about to transform. Miranda and Larson both know that artists must keep pushing forward and making an impact wherever and whenever they can before there is no tomorrow.

Tick, Tick… Boom! It will be released in limited theatrical releases on November 12, and it will debut on Netflix on Nov. 19.