Movie Review: 'Tick Tick Boom' is a Glorious Explosion of Love and Musical Theater

Tick Tick Boom stars Andrew Garfield in the role of Broadway composer Jonathan Larson. Best known as the creator of the Broadway smash Rent, Larson died a tragically young death just before Rent arrived on Broadway and became a cultural phenomenon. Tick Tick Boom was the name of a rock n roll monologue stage show that Larson created and performed before Rent but after his dream of a Broadway musical called Superbia crashed and burned before he could ever take it on stage.

In Tick Tick Boom we have a musical depicting Larson’s life and his love of music along with the coterie of friends and fellow dreamers that made up his loosely tied New York family. Among that family are Susan (Alexandra Shipp), Jonathan’s loving and patient dancer girlfriend and Michael (Robin De Jesus), Jonathan’s friend from childhood and an aspiring actor. While Jonathan toils away on Superbia, both Susan and Michael are moving on in their lives with Susan pursuing an out of New York City job teaching dance and Michael giving up life as a starving artist in favor of a high paying job in advertising.

The natural conflicts that arise from Jonathan’s obsession with creating and his friends acquiescing to the rigors of adult life pour forward in torrents of emotion, humor, loss, grief, and boundless joy in the songs Larson created that became Tick Tick Boom. Directed by Lin Manuel Miranda, Tick Tick Boom is an audacious and emotional film with the breakneck pace and choreography of a Broadway banger that somehow doesn’t lose touch with the glaring differences between stage performances and film performances.

The recent example du jour of failing to adapt a musical to the big screen is, of course, Dear Evan Hanson which featured star Ben Platt delivering a broad and silly Broadway musical performance inside of a movie where everyone else is acting to the movie screen and not a theater crowd. Platt emotes to the back of the room while everyone else is just acting and the dichotomy between these performances, along with Platt clearly aging out of the role of a teenager, created pure doom on the big screen.

Lin Manuel Miranda meanwhile, smartly avoids Broadway theatrics by casting a movie star instead of a Broadway star as his lead and directing the action for the magic of the movies rather than the stage. Miranda’s skillful direction takes Broadway style music and makes it cinematic and dynamic, dreamlike and passionate, while grounded in a life story that feels authentic and genuinely lived in. Miranda takes some big, Broadway style swings, but never forgets to bring the intimacy of the camera back into focus.

The masterful way that Miranda brings Broadway to the movies can be found in his conceptualization of the Larson song, Sunday. In this sequence, Jonathan is working at a diner on a busy Sunday morning. The place is packed and he’s a little bitter about that and sings a song about it. As Larson is delivering his witty and caustic take on brunch customers, the customers begin to become part of the song and, if you’re a fan of Broadway, familiar faces become clear as Broadway legends stand up to join Larson just as the front side of the cafe falls forward to become a stage on which Larson can lead his immaculate chorus.

Sunday is intended as a comic insight into Jonathan’s frustration with working in the service industry and it still is that, but it also becomes this remarkable emotional flourish as the heady realization of so much Broadway talent is brought to bear on this song washes over you. The staging feels like old Hollywood with a touch of Singing in the Rain and a little bit of West Side Story clearly sneaking in on the edges. Meanwhile, the song thematically brings Jonathan’s desire to escape wage slavery into the world of art to brilliant, beautiful and utterly charming life.

Sunday is one of many, many highlights of Tick Tick Boom which manages to bring Lin Manuel Miranda’s skillful direction into perfect partnership with the life and legacy of Jonathan Larson. In Miranda’s hands, Larson’s struggles and laments reveal his indomitable spirit and unending passion for creation while never losing sight of the very human frailty and empathy at the heart of Jonathan Larson. That is the true triumph of Tick Tick Boom, the heartfelt and genuine tribute to Larson coalescing into a broader celebration of the power of great art.

I don’t really know if Andrew Garfield can sing. I’m someone who liked Russell Crowe’s performance in the film adaptation of Les Miserables, a much derided performance that I feel fits perfectly within the universe of the film and brilliantly captures the emotional truth of the character. Garfield, for me, sounded incredible. His energy and verve in every note of every song was electrifying and the way he proves capable of drawing Broadway style back to a silver screen performance is a remarkable feat. I’m sure many will tell me about Garfield’s shortcomings but the emotional truth in his performance is more than enough for me.

Say what you will about Rent, the inspiration behind that story is real and deeply emotional. Throughout Tick Tick Boom we are reminded that in 1990, when this story is set, AIDS was killing so many people, many of them in New York City, and far too many in the sphere of Jonathan Larson. Some of Larson’s closest friends died from AIDS and the specter of the illness combined with Jonathan’s raging desire to do something, anything to bring attention to the subject more than justifies the creation of Rent and cements its legacy as a deeply flawed but deeply empathetic work of art.

Tick Tick Boom was a revelation for me. In recent months, I have fallen in love with Broadway. Yes, theater people, I’m Hamilton convert. I didn’t start to enjoy Broadway until I saw Hamilton on Disney Plus, I admit it. After that I discovered the YouTube channel Wait in the Wings and my newfound love of Broadway was confirmed. Thus, Tick Tick Boom arrived at exactly the right moment for me. I believe I would have loved this movie without having recently begun to love Broadway, it’s just that good, but having a love of musicals, I must admit, made Tick Tick Boom much easier to fall in love with.

Tick Tick Boom is one of the best movies of 2021. The film debuts in limited theatrical release on November 12th and will be available on Netflix on November 19th, 2021.