Tik Tik...Boom! Review: An Explosive Celebration of Theatrical Obsession
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial debut is an energetic story we’ve seen many times before.
The story of the obsessed artist willing to sacrifice anything and everything is one told hundreds of times. Although Lin Manuel Miranda’s directorial debut is far from an opening night flop, I wouldn’t say it has the originality and nuance required for a defining film in an oversaturated genre.
While not being a die hard musical fan, I can appreciate a film that isn’t afraid to bend reality for the sake of song. Starring Andrew Garfield as the late creator of Rent, Jonathan Larson, the film follows the mastermind musician in his attempt to finish a crucial song for his musical that’s been in the oven for eight years, Suberbia, before his workshop in one week. However, this narrative is told from the filmic adaptation of his following musical Tik, Tik...Boom!, an autobiographical one man show detailing his struggles to finish Suberbia while juggling life’s many hardships.
In other words, Larson’s struggle is that of self worth and artistry in the face of a world that buries it. At least, that what the movie claims it’s about. Larson goes on many self serving rants both victimizing and promoting himself as a auteur with a greater purpose than gasp advertisement. While this is a message I highly relate to (as anyone can with a dream in the entertainment industry), Larson comes off as the most annoying type of artist: the one blind to his creatively motivated superiority complex that views themselves as something more than those around him who “just don’t get it”. I would say this is the start for an arc that is now a staple of this form of narrative, I never found the pacing or story beats to capitalize on this initial flaw. Larson doesn’t change his course of action until halfway through the movie, but from then on the film starts to pick up. In fact, this first half is easily the lesser part of the movie. Side characters and stresses of Larson’s life feel more like the movie repeatedly saying “don’t forget about this!” instead of a comprehensible cloud of pressure that follows the main character from beat to beat.
It is this shallowness that dampened the experience for me. Characters jumping in and out with twenty to thirty minute breaks lessens the stress that motivated the very show Tik, Tik...Boom! is adapting. Emotional moments tended to fall flat for me where I should have been invested (except for the notably fantastic solo near the end of the film). Themes of revolution and changing the world felt more like a set up for Larson’s eventual Opus in Rent instead of an interesting narrative thread. If this is the case, in one reviewers opinion, then moments where these themes do appear could have been omitted for a smoother experience.
That isn’t to say the entire film follows the less than stellar pattern of the first half, as the successes of this movie results in an entertaining exploration of the struggling artist that, not revolutionary, is satisfying at some level. During the later moments of the film, I felt nervous for Larson. I wanted him to succeed, and as the ticking grew and the stresses kept piling on, I was hooked. The music has a similar entrancing nature, I couldn’t help but bop my head to Garfield’s surprisingly great singing. While I wish the visuals matched the eccentric energy brought by both Garfield’s performance and the songs, I can’t say the film ever looked boring or uninspired, certainly a competent aesthetic for a directorial debut.
Overall, Tik, Tik...Boom! provides a somewhat shallow story of a character we’ve seen dozens of times before that I wish saw more development. Through an ok first half all the way to a solid ending with melodies that won’t leave my head for the next few days, Tik, Tik...Boom! is neither more or less than I expected.