Regarding Ben Platt's t-rex arm mannerisms- It's pretty clear that the reason why he does tiny gestures because Ben Platt is used to the stage giving him full range of movement, and in the film adaptation he is stuck in my tiny tv. If he gestures too widely he'll hit the side of the screen.
During If I Could Tell Her, when Ben Platt was advancing on Zoe with that depraved look in his eye my friend whispered "he's got a knife" and it was the most enjoyment I got out of this movie
Its kinda badass of Connor's actor to finnesse both the best and shortest role in the film, show his emotional range by playing both a sad emo version and a charismatic show toons version of the same character and then cut out of the film before he has to do anything else. Literally the perfect acting reel.
Conner's actor is actually really good! his name's Colton Ryan and he's the second lead in my favorite musical Alice by heart where he also shows incredible range. i hope he gets roles better than this lol
@@fawnlowell6094fun fact! Mike Faist was also involved in the Alice by heart workshops. It’s really cool how these two actors are connected - theatre is a small world!
He turned up on an episode of Poker Face and I was like "Where do I know that guy from? Oh right, a movie I've never seen and only know about from a Jenny Nicholson video."
he kinda looks like he's turning into a zombie with the weird puffed up kinda pale face, sweat, bulging facial muscles, and strange hunched over lurching walk
Movie could've been fixed if they added a scene right at the top where Evan looks to camera and says dryly: "I can't believe I was held back ten years in a row"
Ben yelling “I LOOOOOOVE YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOU”, his face desperately attempting to escape his head, while slowly approaching Zoey as the camera stays entirely still is absolutely horrifying
I know this video is a year old at this point, but I want you to know that if an orchard “closes”, they have to rip all the trees out. Because the trees could become a hotbed of disease and pests if left unattended, they have to be removed to protect other farms in the area. Due to the nightmare cost of that, orchards generally don’t close, they just get sold to other farmers. Source: Apple farmers in the family
To add to this: Whenever an orchard truly closes it is typically because the land has become unusable either because of poor management or extremely bad cases of pests like nematodes or some fungi, such as armillaria (this actually ruined a local orchard industry) that can wipe out entire stands and then live in the soil for many years after. This would make it likely impossible to reopen the orchard, even for $100,000. Source: I'm getting a degree in forest pathology.
Thanks for the info, really interesting how a huge acreage of a single crop can actually threaten others in the area. Hope our horrendous monoculture farming practices go extinct soon. Permaculture is the future!
"so you've got a bunch of normal looking characters looking at this big, hunching, mop-headed man. Eyes sunken into his artificially puffy face, warbling out high notes like an anxious Jiminey Cricket" is the most hilarious, out of pocket, spot-on roast of a single character I’ve ever heard I’m obsessed with the way you speak lmao
Zoey: "what about the time he tried to break down my door, telling me he was gonna kill me for no reason?" Jenny: "wow, I cant believe he told her it was gonna be for no reason." Jenny is a professional piss taker.
My all-time favourite definitely doesn't show off Jenny's staggering facility of language as well as the one in the OP but it's still too good not to mention. When she did a reading of Colin Trevorrow's leaked script for Star Wars Episode IX, a new character was killed off and her response was, "he died the way he lived - wasting my time!"@@reneedailey1696
you skipped my favorite part of that line, the "in shambles!" "So you've got a scene with a bunch of normal looking characters, and in shambles this big hunching mop-headed man, eyes sunken into his artificially puffy face, warbling out high notes like an anxious Jiminey Cricket" (agreed that this line is amazing, it's one of my favorite lines from jenny ever)
I love how the inciting incident of this story relies on Evan having a therapist, and then that therapist promptly drops off the face of the earth for the rest of the story.
Oh my god, I've never thought about that... and imagine how much that could have helped him, having a person who he can be honest with and who is on his side through all of this - he could have told his therapist the truth right away, and they would probably have helped him navigate out of the net of lies he created, instead of making it progressively worse.
Are we sure that was even a licensed therapist? Did anyone see their license? Did the family just roll up to a place with a plastic banner hung over the door that said "Bob's Discount Therapy And Halloween Costumes"?
yeah his mom says he skipped an appointment, its still weird that he doesnt see him throughout the length of the movie. it seemed like a regular session kind of deal
On stage, the hunched thing did definitely make him look truly like pathologically anxious and tense but I agree that up close and with everything else working against him, it does make him look like nosferatu
Now I'm imagining a much better version of this musical where Evan is a vampire and it's like a black comedy where he eats Connor and makes up this elaborate lie to try and maintain his cover as a human teen
i thought the "his best friend died... you won't believe what he did next" screenshot was a funny little title card created for this video essay, when i saw it in the actual scene movie i just about lost my mind
When Evan says he wants depressed kids to “go out and climb trees” am i the only one who feels that its a pretty morbid thing to say when he has just tried to kill himself by jumping out of a tree?
Which was a totally unnecessary and problematic revelation in the first place - the point of the cast on his arm isn't how he broke his arm - it's to show that it has no signatures - he has no friends. That's the entire point of his cast. Trying to shoe-horn in at the end an explanation for how he broke his arm serves no purpose but to muddle the story.
I feel like in another universe there’s a musical about a teenage girl whose deeply troubled, emotionally (and occasionally physically) abusive older brother commits suicide, and his family discover that he was friends with a withdrawn boy in her class she barely knows. Her parents invite this boy into their lives in a bid to try and understand their lost son better. The girl, full of confused feelings about her brother and how everyone is reacting to his death, gradually finds herself being drawn to the boy and then falling for him. And then it’s revealed the boy’s stories are lies and he was motivated to get close to the girl’s family because he’s had a secret crush on her.
Up until reading this comment it had never ocurred to me how good it would be to have Zoe's perspective on this. "Requiem" is a pretty solid song and I resonated with it a lot, that glimpse of the character that we're provided with then is quite human. Honestly I'd love to have someone reboot this with Zoe as the protagonist, even if it's just as fanfiction lol.
Cutting together "This is Me" and "You Will Be Found" was so seamless that, because I'd never heard either song before and was tabbed out at that moment, I didn't even realize they'd been cut together. It just felt like one song. Masterful.
Honestly, the premise of the movie on its own was already enough for me to feel rather strongly and have no intention of ever watching it… but this was fun.
"Maybe Evan's not a nice boy. Maybe he's just a quiet boy." Seeeeriously. A lot of people have trouble understanding that "quiet" or "shy" or "introverted" does not mean "nice". Just because someone's not loud and flashy about being a jerk doesn't mean they're not one.
Media has not been kind to "popular" kids. There's a reason why Legally Blonde was so groundbreaking and still stands as iconic. El's friends are probably my favorite part of the movie because even tho they are ditsy, "superficial" bimbos they are unapologetically and wholeheartedly supportive of El in everything she does. They even come to her first court case.
@@colt9836 fr, I was a social chameleon in high school and hung out with the band geeks and football/cheer team. The popular kids didn't pay much mind to being negative, but every gd time I sat with my band mates they'd be under the impression that a cheerleader was talking shit about them or a jock was silently judging them. They bullied these people in response to the ASSUMPTION of bullying. When I told them that the after game parties were just hang outs where they made chocolate chip pancakes and played soul caliber they would NOT believe me. Media has brainwashed quiet kids into victimizing themselves lol.
@@colt9836fr, most popular kids I knew in school was honestly quite decent. The stereotype of the "bitchy mean girl" or the "meathead jock bully" is either an American thing or just a straight up projection of someone who was bullied or was jealous of certain people in school.
The whole premise of the story is someone with crippling social anxiety willfully creating a situation in which they are surrounded by emotionally compromised strangers, at the center of attention, and have to constantly worry about saying the wrong thing. This should be his kryptonite. These are all of the exact things he'd compulsively distance himself from. Then we're expected to believe he _thrives,_ when these conditions would be constantly wearing him down. It's like they came up with this idea that the character would do this morally reprehensible thing, and then they tacked on mental illness to make the character sympathetic. It's a square peg in a round hole.
One of many ways the story could've been improved would've been by having Evam crumble under the weight of the situation and confess. He and the whole situation would have felt much more believable if he'd just naturally come to find what he was doing unbearable, instead of needing to be prompted by [checks notes] a grieving family getting canceled on social media because of contrived misinterpretations of the alleged suicide note his "friend" leaked after being given it in confidentiality because she wanted to boost a Kickstarter to buy an orchard. The story tries so hard to make sure the audience sees Evan as sympathetic that they just end up making him look like a psychopath.
I feel like this could make an awesome dark comedy. Imagine him digging himself deeper into his worst nightmare as he keep lying to cover up for himself.
Honestly I think I would like the plot if Evan weren't an attempt at a sympathetic character & was purely a deceiving manipulative dude using his quiet demeanor to lure people into thinking he's a sad, gentle, shy teenager. I mean, people always say that sch**l sh**ters (I don't want the YT algorithm deleting my comment) are sad shy dudes. & of course not all sad shy dudes are manipulative but you're right that Evan's anxiety & insecurity, which we KNOW to be genuine, appear incongruous with his role as skillful manipulator relying on charm & social skills to deceive a grieving family. What if the anxiety & insecurity weren't genuine? I think that could be an interesting plot on its own.
i was forced to sing both “This is Me” and “You Will Be Found” in my high school choir, and they sounded so god damn similar that i felt like i was losing my goddamn mind.
Literally the exact same thing happened to me. As a bass, nothing can put into words my burning hatred for Broadway songs haphazardly slapped into choral arrangements
Because it’s 100% correct. Evan isn’t the nice kid with social anxiety who’s alone because he has trouble connecting he’s the quiet kid who nobody talks to because everybody who does know him know he’s bad news and should be avoided
@@mrcritical6751 yeah, it’s sad when people are like this, there was this girl who i thought was just kind but shy so i talked to her, then upon talking to her i realized why she didn’t have friends because she would try to look up bakudeku p0rn on my phone and show me even when i told her i was uncomfortable with that, she also is incredibly rude to teachers who are nice to her, she makes offhand rude comments about people, and doesn’t do any schoolwork but instead looks up my hero academia r18 things on school computers
This movie is unintentionally very good at depicting social anxiety because 28 year old Ben Platt in ghoulish teenager cosplay accurately depicts how I think I look in any given social situation
Physically can't get over the way Ben walks and moves in this. It's like a horribly exaggerated version of someone with anxiety. Like they told him "nobody will be able to tell your character is anxious unless you walk around like you're missing a few vertebrae"
To be fair, in stage acting everything needs to be exaggerated for people who are way far back but good god why did no one tell him stage acting is a whole other ballpark than film
I think it’s so funny how Evan says “the only man that I love is my dad” in a homophobic joke line, only for multiple songs to mention that he isn’t in contact with his dad at all and hasn’t seen him in over a decade.
in the play both connor and evan when they are singing that line, they emphasize this comment, highlighting the ironic fact that none of them get along with their respective father, it's intentional
Eh, it's not quite that bad. He does try to tell people. They want badly to believe Connor had friends so they ignore him. It works much better in the play.
the guy who played Connor looks like he completely upstages Ben Platt and his character dies literally right away. his dancing alone is really great. I hope this movie doesn’t harpoon his career
The actor was an understudy in the original musical, which is crazy because yes, he is obviously an extremely talented actor and in some ways that makes him perfect for the role of "guy who wasn't really given a chance and now he's just a character for others to control"
A version of Dear Even Hanson where his lie gets found out when Connor reveals that he faked his own death only for him to return at the beginning of the 3rd act
I would genuinely enjoy this so much, and i hate that you've put this idea in my head because it's an infinitely more interesting show that does not exist
They probably would have gotten that award if they hadn't miscast Evan so badly. That role really was made for Colm Wilkinson and he was definitely robbed of the opportunity to play a teenage boy in the movie.
this film actually depicts anxiety very well, in that whenever i look at Ben Platt's red, sweaty, grimacing, unhinged face bulging outwards in every direction, it makes my anxiety fucking shoot through the roof
It would have been effective if they had a likeable, young (-looking) actor play the character as he is seen by other people and then Ben Platt could have played him as seen by himself. Like, in reality, he's a typical teenager, but in his own mind he is Ben Platt.
What gets me is that they cut out "Good For You", which is arguably the best song in the original musical, because it's all about the side characters affected by his actions roasting the fuck out of Evan. It was an already hollow musical but at least that gave it some more substance; can't have any of that in the movie though!
Same! I was really disappointed when that song was cut, it's my favourite and it would've made the movie perhaps a biiit more tolerable for me than the hell that it is.
This comment made me go watch an animatic of it, and yep you’re right it’s the best song in the musical. Better than Sincerely Me, just cuz this one isn’t terribly sad and sinister with context.
literally. i refused to watch this movie even though i enjoyed the musical simply FOR the songs and FOR the reason that evan is absolutely the villain. i never pitied evan and appreciated how the musical showed that people who seem like they’re being really nice are actually fucking evil. but the way they totally bastardized the characters in the movie and tried to be like “poor baby :(((( poor little evan and poor alana and poor jared and poor conner :(((((“ like nah they might have mental illnesses but do not have immunity from their awful, AWFUL behaviors.
what i didn’t include in that other comment is that i enjoy good for you because it SHOWS how even people who were in the gig for their OWN profit are hurt by evan who was WORSE than them. it shows that evan really is the villain.
SAME!!!!!! good for you is one of my fav musical songs from any musical- and I was so disappointed to see it cut out :( not to mention having such a big impact on the other characters
I feel like Alana doesn't get enough shit for posting Connor's "suicide note" online. That's a fucking horrible and disgusting thing for someone to do. And she did it for MONEY. No one in this story is worse than Evan (and Jared, of course). But Alana slid into a close second place after she did that.
The ironic thing is, I kind of prefer Alana in the stage musical. Because similar to Evan, she’s using Connor’s situation for her own self-glorification, but the stage show knows this.
@@osmanyousif7849 Also in the stage version, her posting the note was more of a knee-jerk reaction and her desperation to raise the money for the orchard was more palpable. In the film, she sits on it for hours and then posts it. She had hours to decide it was a bad idea and posted it anyway.
@@osmanyousif7849 The film takes a lot of the grit out of the secondary characters. In the stage version Jared is selling "RIP Connor" buttons, Alana comes off more as an opportunistic outcast who is trying to act like her being lab partners with Connor means something at all, Heidi dismisses Evan's feelings when she forgot about their taco night because she doesn't want to accept that she's letting him down. The film felt very sanitized compared to the stage version, like, they didn't want the characters to be too complex.
@@creategenius719 , agree with everything you said except for the fact that the movie didn’t want it’s secondary characters to “be too complex”. Because it’s made abundantly clear from Ben Platt and his daddy that they wanted all the focus to be about Evan, portraying him in the film as if he’s a victim who’s compelled to what he did instead of having any sort of autonomy. Well good f**king job with that, Marc.
As someone who grew up during the musical era of Tumblr, I knew nothing about this musical or its plot, I just saw tons of people shipping Evan and Connor (I think?) Now that I know the plot I'm just completely dumbfounded as to why people were doing that.
Also, I've got to say, if my sibling died and some random kid started lying about being close with them to date me and I found out I would be going to jail for attempted murder.
it was certainly one of the more interesting sides of musical fandom lol. i was on tumblr at the exact same time and when i read the synopsis for dear evan hansen for the first time, i remember being so dumbfounded that this was the musical ppl latched onto. at least the gay jokes in the other popular musicals at the time weren't so cruel....
I remember thinking “aw that’s cute. Maybe it’s a musical about a couple of bff’s who like fall in love or something. I’m gay, I like that shit” and it ended up being a drama about suicide and exploitation and I felt really weird about myself afterwards.
@@gabriellegoodwin4422 i'd seen "sincerely me" and thought the same thing, i thought it was some goofy dark comedy thing based on the tone of that song. it was not. it's wild how vastly different in tone that one singular song is, and honestly if they'd kept that dark comedy vibe throughout the whole thing i would have liked it a whole lot more, but they try to play all of this completely seriously and do a piss poor job.
i've always thought that the whole musical was in the same light as the sincerely me song because it's probably the only one that ever got into my circles enough to draw any attention. i was going to by the plot because the song made it look almost self-aware and darkly comedic. the shock i felt after watching this vid and learning that the rest of the play is drastically different lmai
the part where he flatly belts out “i love you” to zoey with his sickly mannequin yellowish face and his buggy eyes while he slowly approached her closer and closer... as a high-school age girl that would genuinely scare me and activated my fight or flight response just seeing it on a screen
I think one of the worst things about both the movie and stage musical is the fact that they have a character commit suicide, but everyone's attention is on what it means for themselves or what they can do about it. Not a single solitary person, with the worst offender being Evan himself, drew attention to the fact that Connor felt so horrible about himself and so hopeless about his direction in life that he would rather off himself than reach out for help to get better. Not a single person, including his PARENTS, were wracking their brains trying to understand how he could have felt so terrible that death seemed more comforting than anything else. I know that in universe Connor was not a well-liked person, but you would think his family would have some degree of guilt, grief, and uncertainty about his suicide. The only character I can give a pass to in this regard is Zoe because the show does a good job explaining her conflicting feelings towards her brother and it would make sense for her to not mourn someone who emotionally abused her. But his parents don't seem to be making any attempts to figure out why he drove himself to end it all, and no Evan's letter that they thought Connor wrote doesn't count because that gives an extremely vague reasoning for why he ends it all. The closest this show comes to addressing the topic of his suicide is the fight the Murphy family has right before "Words Fail" finally airing out their grief about his death and how yelling at each other about all the ways they failed him whether it was through enabling him, berating him, or a toxic mix of both. But that incredibly well written scene is brought to a screeching halt when Evan drops the bomb on them about the reality of his relationship with Connor. Not even the people running the Connor Project seem to consider for one moment that maybe, maybe, the Connor Project should be a suicide prevention project and raising money to fund mental health programs, research centers for teen psychology, how to give suicidal teens the resources necessary to seek help as an alternative to the dark one they're thinking about, literally anything would be better than funding an apple orchard that only helps Connor and his family. It is so rare for me to see a show mangle its moral messages and themes this disastrously and I honestly cannot believe no one was in the writers room to tell Pasek and Paul to take a hard look at the story they've written.
On this note, "You Will Be Found" is so hypocritical. How are we supposed to take seriously the message of "when it's dark people will be there for you", while Connor was alone to the point of committing suicide and is now having his memory overwritten with lies?
I think we're to assume that all the "guilt, grief, and uncertainty" happened normally as it would for any grieving family, and the musical focused on Evan's story rather than it.
You know, I think I should take a moment an recommend to you a film that tackles something like this much better. A film called World's Greatest Dad, starring Robin Williams. In that movie, the character Lance Clayton is an underappreciated high school English/Poetry teacher, who has a passion for writing and yearns to become a famous author. He's a man who gets looked down upon by many, including his own son Kyle, who is an ungrateful misanthrope. One night, he finds Kyle accidently killed himself, and Lance, distraught by seeing his own son dead, especially in a very humiliating way, stages his death as a suicide, to salvage a bit a dignity for Kyle. While nobody finds out what actually happen, a student manages to obtain Kyle's "suicide note" and publishes it in the newspaper (Because that's what any sane person would do, RIGHT!?!?!). But much to Lance's surprise, everyone starts to praise him for having such a "lovey intelligent son" like Kyle, claiming to be his friend, and become fascinated by him. Therefore, Lance takes advantage of this to get the attention he's always wanted, and decides to publish a fraud journal under Kyle's name about "things Kyle did, before his death". But something to note is that the movie knows that what Lance's doing is self-serving, especially if you think about the movie's title. But you are still able to empathize with Lance, even if what he's doing is wrong. However that wasn't what the film's focus was about. You see, instead of the release of Kyle's "journal" having everyone connect with him and each other, it's made clear that's BULLS**T. Because the people who are claiming that they were connecting or inspired by Kyle, were the same ones who detested him (although, justifiably so...). They never knew him or cared about him, but are just hopping onto the bandwagon, using Kyle's death to signal their own virtue. The film's premise was meant to be a satirical black-comedy, on how people make the dead become celebrities and how everyone starts saying how they knew this person and cared so much about them, but what if these people were actually bulls**ting, behind our backs this whole time. So World's Greatest Dad works because it's not trying to be some lecture about mental illness, but creates a premise that has a protagonist you empathize with, while getting some good laughs at how absurd the whole scenario is. But Dear Evan Hansen tries to lecture about mental illness, makes the protagonist someone you're expected to sympathize with (but actually want to strangle the living crap out of), and tries to be all emotional and dramatic with it's absurdity.
@@osmanyousif7849 Yay, thank you for this excellent summary and analysis! "World's Greatest Dad" is one of my top favorite films and it's very underrated (but you certainly need to be in the proper mood for it, emphasis on DARK comedy). And since I'm not a musical theater person, I had never heard of "Dear Evan Hanson," so when I first saw the movie trailer a few years ago my first thought was, "Oh, so it's like the plot of 'World's Greatest Dad' but a drama taken seriously?" I've since learned, despite not seeing the DEH movie, that its execution is terrible and tasteless, and much like how Jenny talks about "Heathers" - "World's Greatest Dad" is another example of how this premise and satire works SO much better as a black comedy.
yeah, i love the song "requiem" but the dad's verse always rubbed me the wrong way, zoe had a valid reason to choose not to mourn connor, but "i gave you the world, you threw it away" is such a shitty reason to choose not to mourn your dead son. i understand anger is one of the stages of grief, and it's one that's not looked into as often as it should be, and grief _can_ oftentimes present itself in a "selfish" way, human emotions aren't perfect and all, but they completely fuck it up here imo. for a show trying to preach about mental health, they seem to completely ignore things that could have helped connor's mental health or kids like him in favor of whatever the hell they thought they were doing here. it's as shallow as something like 13 reasons why
So Evan was able to find new meaning in his life after someone else's suicide, while people remember that person better than he actually was? Yeah that's not going to get misconstrued by a depressed teenager.
oh jeez, I didn't even think of that. considering how many depressed people I know (including myself) who love musicals that might be an issue. Thankfully none of us actually like this one
To be fair, depressed teenagers (or generally anyone suffering from depression) will fit anything into a “the world is shit and possibly better without me” box. That’s what meds and therapy are for, because it’s simply not true, but the feeling won’t go away, even if everyone tip-toes around them.
@@missmusicalsrock oh my god yes! I will die mad about the fact that it lost best musical! It’s got a clear story with intense emotion and a metric ton of bangers.
for those wondering why this even got made into a film and not a pro-shot (live recording of the stage show), it’s because pro-shots are not eligible for oscars. yup. that’s it. this film only exists to give ben platt an oscar. that’s literally it.
I have been a theatre actor for a large portion of my life. During my first film audition the first comment the Director made was "you're a theatre actor, aren't you?" He knew because everything I did was bigger than it needed to be. This was for a local film in Kentucky. How did a Hollywood Director not give Ben that note?
In One Direction’s defence, Jenny, they did *try* to share the best song ever with us. They think it went ‘oh, oh, oh’. They think it went ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’ They think it went ‘oooh’.
"The Dear Evan Hansen movie honestly feels like propaganda written by Evan Hansen himself," is honestly the best summary of the movie i've seen so far lol
I’m confused about how the murphys get doxxed and harassed because their mentally ill son felt lonely, but Evan comes clean with the lie and kinda just walks free to live his life? That shit would follow him to his grave
"Top 11 Idiot Children Doing Cringeworthy Things While Publicly Grieving" The heart-warming lockdown content that the clickbait algorithms have decided we need right now
@@tychopanda Binge 'Oversimplified' and 'Sci Man Dan' in a rotation-order (one, then the other, than the other again, than switching again, and so on) and then you tell me how it was!
Coming back to this video because there was a school shooting at the college right where I lived in 2023 and 3 students’ lives were taken by the gunman. The community theatre I was a part of held a small candlelight vigil as an act of solidarity for the victims. The song they chose to sing: You Will be Found from Dear Evan Hansen. I bit my tongue of course and tried my best to get in the right mindset, since everyone around me was very emotional and sincere. However, I don’t think I can think of a more morbid song to sing in honor of students who were literally chased down by a gunman than “You Will be Found”
Adults playing teenagers isn't an issue for me, but he just looks SO old in this movie that without context it looks like it's about a married man who's going through a mid-life crisis and is trying to get the neighbor's teenaged daughter to hook up with him. He looks younger outside of the movie! For some reason having a beard makes him look closer to being a teenager.
In 'The Politician', which was filmed the same year I believe, Ben Platt plays a teenager and passes well enough as one. He's still clearly not a teenager, but it's more forgivable due to the hair and makeup helping out. The makeup and the hair in this movie are just not it whatsoever. Even if I forgave the hair, THE MAKEUP plssss they didn't even try
I’d be more interested in a musical titled “Dear Mr. Farmer,” about a farmer who bought an orchard, realized it wasn’t his thing, closed it, and then all of a sudden has to figure out what to do with some random Kickstarter’s $100,000 donation.
That reminds me of a story i know. This one dude worked all his twenties as a delivery man for companies that sold non alcoholic beverages, and then climbed up until he got to some important position still in the delivery area for Coca Cola. Years later he got fired and thought that it was a nice moment to start farming since he used to love it so much as a hobby. Turns out he hated it as a full time job, so he sold all his animals and lands and consumed by his resentment towards Coca Cola for laying him out, bought a big factory in the middle of a big city, miles away from his home. He moved there with all his family and started an non alcoholic beverage business just to compete with Coca Cola. He named his trademark soda Manaos, and it's one of the preferred sodas in argentinian homes.
Honestly horrifying to me that the movie never fully grapples with the fact that Evan effectively erased Connor from memory. Like his parents will never remember their son again without it being tainted by Evan's lies.
It's not like it was basically ok otherwise. I'm not sure you can make the memory worse really. In fact, by giving the family a villain to hate, it might help ease the guilt of failing to save their son's life. They will instead remember the asshole who came and effed with their lives for no good reason
No honestly that is probably the scariest part of the entire story. Imagine being dead and some random guy you barely know starts telling your family completely fictional stories about you to a point that they believe in a completely different view of who you were as a person. At that point, even if that view is ‘better’, your own legacy isn’t yours. Your life and the person you were in it is practically meaningless because the story outlives the author
@@guldmattbb473 But he was, like, an awful person by most accounts. Maybe caused by severe mental illness but that doesn't really excuse abusive behavior. So is a hideous truth really better? Like, I'd rather be entirely forgotten than be remembered as a troubled monster
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 the thing is that you have the choice to decide you'd want the lie more than your actual legacy. Evan essentially took that decision away from him completely after the fact and there's no way to ever ask him if he was ok with his reputation being tied to a guy he's barely spoken to before who only really did it to get into his sister's pants.
"a guy from my highschool died and now everyone thinks I'm his best friend and I'm dating his sister under the pretense that I am the only person who knows what her brother was like but I don't know a thing about this guy, AITA?"
Sometimes it's fun to watch trash, to pick out those brief moments when the actors who probably knew it was going to be trash decided to just go with it and got the performance spot on. Unfortunately this is not that kind of trash.
This isn't especially relevant, but more comments will only drive up Jenny's place in The Algorithm so what the heck: Whenever a Naruto run comes up, I think of a video I saw ages ago of self-taught free runners using a professional gymnastics gym in front of trained ballerinas. One of the free runners did a Naruto run at a vaulting horse, and a ballerina commented that his form was "interesting."
after my brother and my dad died i used to struggle with insomnia really bad (combination of night terrors and PTSD)... i used to put on this channel and listen to it as i tried to fall asleep. it really helped. her voice is really soothing. shit helped me through some rough times. i love your channel. kudos mate.
this type of humour absolutely kills me every time. Reminds me of that one tumblr post that talks about wanting to be brave like Brave from Disney’s Brave
He’s not the nice kid dealt a bad hand and looked down upon by the rest of the school, he’s the kid that people know what he’s like tell you to leave him alone
Sounds like decent ish story. The whole new girl in town, think the nice guy outcast is bullied and different, befriends him only to find out he is actually an outcast cos he sucks. So… twilight, or Heather’s. Never mind
Was looking for this quote called out. As someone who had to learn this lesson directly a few times...there are low-key problems with socializing that all awkward or socially-withdrawn people are sensitive and nice or need you, a little girl, to be their friend. Nope - don’t ignore the hair raising on the back of your neck.
@@mfenn7325 this reminds me of how after school shootings, shooters are often characterized as sad lonely kids who would have done nothing wrong if their classmates had just befriended them. The way that attitude pushes off the prevention of school shootings on the very victims has always made me extremely uncomfortable. Just the fact that some people would expect a child to go out of their way to befriend someone who is already unstable, possibly violent and often harbors some form of bigotry, in order to not get brutally murdered by that person is appalling.
28:02 this is actually horrifying he looks nowhere near a child and the camera is angled in a way that makes him look like he's towering over the audience while he creepily shuffles forward with that sinister looking hunch and bulging eyes sing-yelling I LOVE YOU this feels like a horror movie scene
I've watched multiple reviews of this and here is my mildly informed conclusion. "Dear Evan Hansen" is as much a musical about mental illness as "The Little Mermaid" is a musical about hoarding.
Lmao yeah, like, it's present in the story and acts as the catalyst for the main plot, but the narrative doesn't bother trying to convey any opinions or messages about it
Well to be fair about the anxiety part; I have that too and others do too and the did display him as struggling to even make that speech in both the play, movie, and novel. Anxiety doesn't stop you from making a speech in total, you CAN do it but it's just so difficult and takes calming down to realize that you have it/you can do it. Sometimes you can push through your anxiety, especially in the moment where Evan found himself/talked about himself (f*cked up since it's someone else's memorial) and finally got to tell people how he felt. You can make a speech without confidence, and he did lie without the confidence and anxiety, anxiety just made it harder for him to handle the monster he created and stressed him out even in the novel. It was just the matter of him finally cracking, you can be a terrible person/lie even with severe anxiety.
A lot of people with anxiety are compulsive liars, where they're so used to lying, it doesn't trigger a stress response anymore and telling the truth can even feel more stressful. That's one of the few things that's actually realistic about the portrayal of mental illness.
@@juliamavroidi8601 yeah, the speech is unrealistic but the continuous lies are pretty normal. At least I lie daily and I too have anxiety. Lies can be comfortable since you're not exposing a reality you might find shameful or embarrassing. We also lie to appear normal.
@@alemunnoz agreed, though in my experience even though I'm used to lying and can do it fairly well, it still stresses me out to hell and back, but telling the truth is even worse. Quite literally choosing between hell or high water.
I have high social anxiety, and I am a terrible liar. I can't tell a good lie when it's important, and people can usually tell immediately when I am lying. I was also raised to not lie, and I'm always worried to lie to people because I don't want them to think I'm a fake deceptive person. it sounds like I'm the weird one here though.
when i was in middle school my best friends boyfriend broke up with her and then minutes later confessed his feelings to me by making me listen to “If I Could Tell Her” on the school bus. good times
Lmao primary school "relationships" were extremely entertaining back in the day. Pretty much just little kids acting out whatever melodrama we saw on tv. Some people never grow out of that though, and thats a shame.
The absolute priceless irony of rewriting a character as gay in order to justify the dated homophobic jokes he makes while at the same time removing practically half of his screen time and agency will never be topped
The audience laughing at homophobic jokes too but now reflecting on it, maybe they tried to add them in to make us dislike him, idk. I guess I have a different sense of humour like dark humour but dont think anyone really should be mocked like that for who they are? Idk.
I've only heard the songs, and read it as "maybe one or both could _be_ gay but are too scared to come out" That's just me, though, an overly optimistic person learning and understanding the whole spectrum of it all.
There's this one scene in the Broadway show that gets overlooked a lot, that made me feel like the start of Evan's lie was more rooted in something recognizable as borne out of real anxiety and not just callous desires: Early on after Connor's suicide, he's called into the school office and sits alone with Connor's parents while they grill him about the "suicide" note and Connor's name on his cast, crying and quite literally BEGGING him to tell them that Connor was his friend. It would be very easy for him to feel like NOT lying to them in that moment would be re-traumatizing them.
Exactly! Pretty sure that was also depicted in the movie. Like, that was the whole reason why Evan lied about it all, why all of that happened. It happened because Connor's mom wouldn't give him a chance to explain even though he tried to tell her at first that the letter wasn't from Connor. He literally even said that Connor didn't write it before Cynthia was begging Evan to tell her they were actually friends. So essentially, it was her fault that all started
@@luna-mo3ol yeah every time I see people criticize the story it seems like they just brush past that. The whole story is set up where at first the Murphy’s understandably draw their own conclusions and Evan, riddled with anxiety and not knowing how to tell the truth to grieving parents, just lets them. And their conclusions lead to them asking things of him that require him to lie and then he doesn’t know how to end it. I know what he did was awful but the entire framing shows he didn’t do it on purpose, so idk why so many people criticize it as if he did.
@@cookieaddictions Because intentions don't matter when the impact is so damaging. Intent vs impact is very real, and his selfish pursuit of the dead kid's sister and using her brother's death as a way to connect with her...That WAS deliberate. Anyone with- anxiety, depression, etc.- The bad things we do don't just get excused because we didn't intend them
this was so cathartic to watch, i attempted suicide in middle school (and failed obviously lol) and didn't tell anyone and then in high school a bunch of my friends got into this stupid musical. i couldn't explain why i found the whole premise and execution of the musical so awful at the time, so seeing it all laid out and then painstakingly ripped to shreds felt incredible.
I'm glad you got through the tunnel and you are right to point out how this musical/movie handles the topic of suicide with the delicacy of a mack truck.
it's been two years, i've watched this video about a hundred times, and i *just* realized that jenny calling this video a "tribute" that she wants to "go viral" is a reference to the plot of dear evan hansen and how dear evan's tribute speech goes viral
As someone who has suffered at the hands of my mentally ill brother, when I first heard 'If I Could Tell Her" I cried because I didn't know the context, and the idea that my brother cared about me at ALL felt so good. After learning the context i was horrified. The entire show reads like it could be a Criminal Minds episode.
I can relate. When I first heard "Requiem" I thought the musical was about the sister and how she doesn't know how to cope with the death of her abusive brother, while everyone expects her to grieve like nothing was wrong... and then I found out Evan is the main character!!! and he convinces her her brother did no wrong actually!!!! A disaster. I could no longer listen to "Requiem" to cope with my own situation, knowing how the story goes
@@mathelaw8994 I think that’s part of the quandary. The song is beautiful. But that also rings hollow because Evan is lying through his teeth. But he’s doing that initially to bring comfort.
@@mathelaw8994 i felt the same way about requiem but it reminded me more specifically of my relationship with my dad. she had the right idea, she was allowed to be mad at her brother and struggle with how to mourn someone you didn’t even get along with. but evan used his OWN PERSONAL FEELINGS TOWARDS HER?? to change the narrative. like, dare i say it, isn’t that gaslighting? a little?
Following the sister’s story, coming to terms with the grief of her brothers death while also struggling with what he did to her and the fact that she’ll never get closure, would’ve been a much better story. The dynamic of caring about someone who’s hurt you, or having to deal with other people propping up and celebrating an abusive person just because they’ve died, is very relatable and real to a lot of people. More powerful, more interesting, the works. But no. We get… this.
Weirdly enough, the song that i resonate with the most is good for you. My mom abandoned me and i feel the lyrics very strongly in response to her actions. Heidi deserved better
"Maybe [he]'s not a nice boy. Maybe he's just a quiet boy." Actually this is amazing advice for teenagers. Just because a boy is quiet doesn't mean he's kind.
I'm a quiet gal, but people always think I'm a bitch because I don't talk constantly. I've been told I'm not by the people I do talk to though, I don't think that "quiet kids are nice" Is a common thought
@@goshdangit4503 Maybe it's part of the trope where everyone is wary of the quiet kid but they're actually really nice once you get to know them? And so people just projected that onto Evan? Idk.
@CowoO often as long as a boy isn’t loud and obnoxious and rowdy, people do start to speak about him like he’s a nice, good person- their teachers, their peers, even people’s parents. this happpens even if they know nothing about him and haven't interacted with him, people just assume those kids must be of good character. there are exceptions: guys people see as threatening, creepy, or weird. eg. punk & goth boys don't receive this treatment as much.
reminder that Ben is dating someone who also played the role of Evan onstage which makes the idea that he thinks no one else can play the role so much funnier
My friend told me that anyone who’s fighting demons should go see this movie. Well I watched it and now the only demon I’m fighting is the ghoulish image of Ben Platt’s scream-singing face haunting me whenever I close my eyes.
I recommend it to anyone fighting demons because no matter how dark your intrusive thoughts are, nothing will be scarier than Ben Platt in a mullet with a dozen layers of foundation falling to his knees in aginst because he's is a tree and literally neurodivergent and a minor :(
it's crazy seeing how normal ben platt looks in an interview, only to cut back to the movie where he looks like he's about 90% of the way through transitioning to the dark side. evan hansen is one padawan massacre away from shooting lighting out of his cast and turning into a toad.
The fact that so many broadway actors are gay and as a community in everyday life they constantly acknowledge this but then on stage any suggestion of queerness is usually laughably out of the question has always been so bizarre to me.
Broadway is a deeply commercial medium. And as we see way too often with Hollywood, "commercial" = heteronormative narratives that don't disturb the masses, or at least their conservative governments and censor boards. Broadway is aiming to get the tourist set and make money on tours, that means not ruffling any feathers and sticking to what has worked before.
Hi , gay here. Ironic homophobic jokes are so prevalent in the community. I actually argued about it and people told me it's coping mechanism or some shit. Like yeah I get it but saying you want to commit hate crime because Frankie Grande looks gay af is just distasteful to me
I’m treating this as canon; the movie is the result of stage Evan trying to recuperate his image after becoming rich from the lie, then getting cancelled for it
@@PKEin in universe Connor’s family made the musical to expose Evan for the asshole he is so Evan using all his orchard money brought the movie rights and made the movie adaptation to make himself look better
Absolutely this. And until the clips in this of him in interviews I had thought he at least *looked* way older like this in day to day life, but apparently not? They just… seriously managed to somehow make him look *way* older than he does normally, while specifically trying to make him look way younger? Like it just completely backfired, and yet no one involved went “Ok, this isn’t working, what if we just didn’t do this and he looked 27 instead?”. It’d be awkward but still better than this! Truly amazing work.
with how they literally convey every single lyric with framing or evan's hand motions I think they cut "anybody have a map" because they couldn't get a good map prop
In the novel, it ends with Evan still intensely guilty for what he had done, but choosing to seem optimistic despite his melancholy inside. He's also taking a gap year. Also in the novel, in the midst of his lie he ends up climbing under his bed one night to see where he stored his cast just to prove to himself Connor had actually existed rather than just been a figment of his imagination. I think that's an interesting point because it seems in the novel he projected onto Connor so bad that he was convinced he was talking about his own death.
He also did the most correct thing by giving Miguel the chance to talk to the Murphy’s, the best chance that family has to truly understand the son they lost. There’s so many good moments from the source, but they go unused
@@onettaviator5396 (Exactly!) anyway, sarcasm aside, Miguel is a boy who Connor was unofficially dating back at his old school before he got kicked out and relocated to the school Evan and he did in the movie/musical. Connor’s reason for suicide in the book is actually given. That day was super stressful for him, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was he texted this old boyfriend to reconnect and never got a text back. He died thinking Miguel didn’t care about him. When Evan and Miguel talk at the end of the book, Miguel really wishes he replied faster and didn’t realize how important it really was to do so in that moment. In the book, Connor actually had someone who loved him. Evan rewrote himself into the narrative as that person, not thinking if someone like Miguel maybe existed. He assumed that Connor had nobody, but it’s not true at all! Just another layer to add to Evan making Connor’s life all about himself.
Yeah, wasn’t the book only written after the show had been on Broadway and was supposed to address the legitimate issues people were bringing up back then?
The most frustrating thing to me is that Evan, as written in the show, does make for an interesting character. I knew a guy like him in high school. The only difference was that the person who committed suicide wasnt real. He'd made up a brother none of us had met. And kept up lies for years about him until telling us he had died. Which we only found out when someone reached out to his mom to give condolences. The shock and horror of being lied to like that, the anger, how it affects the mental health of everyone involved, how deeply saddening it is to watch someone self destruct like that-it would all make for some fantastic drama. Its too bad the show wanted to have its cake and eat it too. Evan didnt need to be good or fixed in the end. He just needed to be willing to work on himself.
You're so right, but I don't think it seemed Evan was presented as "good" or "fixed" in the Broadway show by any means? After all, he loses everything. Which seemed like justice, but not too harsh a punishment for a mentally ill child who did not seem to have malicious intentions. And he clearly still is continuing with his therapy, since he's still doing the note-writing exercise.
@@alexbennet4195 oh for sure, he was no hero. And if you just listened to the soundtrack, the final number where he is writing another letter to himself does give that impression. But I think the show itself fell a little flat. Im not a fan of the orchard plot in general, so it didnt feel like everything came together at the end.
I agree that it’s an interesting plot. I’ve also met people that would tell lies and make up “people” to spice up their tales. My issue with this film is the framing seems to be that…the lies were for the best? like, it’s supposed to be an inspiring tale of sorts? It’s too jarring for me. Does the broadway show come across like that too? a cheerful inspiring tale of sorts?
@@PunkExMachina nah dont worry. in the musical pretty much everyone evan's talked to hates him. the only one who doesnt hate him in the end is heidi and she still got really hurt by him. i think the end is more about how you are able to grow and move on from being a terrible person, not that everyone is gonna forgive you if you lie to them
I love Jenny absolutely *ripping* into the way Platt looks in this film. Everything said is spot on- he is absolutely menacing throughout the entire movie😭 One of my favourite descriptions: "It looks like his face is trying to escape his head"
Seriously, re: his face trying to escape his head, the comparison between everyone else's performance and his performance was almost jump scare caliber, lmao
I know this video is about dear evan hansen but the ridiculously loud splat sound effect that they added to javert's suicide in tom hooper's les mis (at 13:26) will never fail to completely destroy the emotional impact of the scene and turn it into a gruesome comedy. Like i think when i first saw it i laughed out loud, its just awful
It's such a bizarrely gruesome choice for Javert to jump into a brick thing like that anyway, when in the original novel and presumably most versions of the musical he drowns himself. I think part of the impact of the suicide is also in how intentional drowning has to be, like you have to stop yourself from doing things to make you survive, which I think shows the audience just how dramatic of a change in Javert this is, that he's able to so fully resign himself to death after being so dogged previously.
Yes exactly! And the area in Paris he drowned himself in the book has nothing like that brick wall he hits. When I traveled there I wanted to see the area that Victor Hugo imagined the story in and the movie changed it for the worse.
I absolutely lost it with the family sternly talking in shock ar Evan lying the whole time only for him to warble "WoOOooOOords Fail. WooooOOrds Fail." It's the funniest thing imaginable. This entire movie/production seems like such a janky disaster. Thank you for covering this mess!
SAYING "words fail" is the most unnatural, inhuman, ridiculous possible way if getting across your inability to think of what to say. Its like an AI was forced to write dialogue after being fed every bad musical ever written
ok i gotta say words fail is incredible as a song on its own and watching ben platt perform it brings me to tears every time. and i havent seen this movie yet. BUT i can totally see how they could ruin it and i’m so sorry they did bcuz out of all moments in the musical that one is my favorite so how dare they lol
Assassins sounds like the musical for you. They talk about murdering people in song! And it’s not dark like Sweeney Todd, all of them are happy and light-hearted.
The exterior shot kills me. It’s got comedic timing like a neighbor is walking by and is confused why he can hear their three part harmony from the street
as an actual victim of sibling inc*st lemme tell ya, it is never endearing to hear that your abusive brother speaks fondly of you to his buddies, it’s creepy as shit 😭😭😭
The only thing this film did was make me feel for Connor, and extensively troubled teen who had so much difficulty with communication and mental health that no one in his life was able to understand him. To such an extent that some random kid could string his family on with complete fabrications. The actor for Connor did a great job and it would have been more interesting to have the story been about ghost connor watching this happen, and struggling with the effects he had on his family and the gross self serving things that evan is doing.
The book is doing that. A little. It has ghost connor at least, and we learn more about him and his home life and I *think* also his perspective on what happens now. Not sure on the last part it's been a while^^'
might be misremembering but i believe the book does that a bit? there's chapters from the perspective of Ghost Connor (and we learn a bit about his past this way too as he looks back on his life.) edit: oop someone already said it lmao
Carry yourself with the confidence of Julianne Moore singing "truck."
ₜᵣᵤcₖ
Trrrrrrruk
16:59 for a time stamp of the truck lol
You've been hit by, you've been struck by, truck
tRUCK
Regarding Ben Platt's t-rex arm mannerisms- It's pretty clear that the reason why he does tiny gestures because Ben Platt is used to the stage giving him full range of movement, and in the film adaptation he is stuck in my tiny tv. If he gestures too widely he'll hit the side of the screen.
That seems reasonable lol
this actually made me lol
Free him
Or someone in the scene with him, Considering there’s also more space on stage for more people
@@valentinahendrick9540 no, stuck in tv
During If I Could Tell Her, when Ben Platt was advancing on Zoe with that depraved look in his eye my friend whispered "he's got a knife" and it was the most enjoyment I got out of this movie
Depraved is exactly the way to describe Platt’s performance there and in the other Zoey scenes
I guffawed.
This made me laugh, a very loud laugh, and all my family heard …..
I NEED TO WTAHC THIS MOVIE WITH MY FRIEND AND SAY TAGT AHAHAHHA THANK YOU
27:56
Its kinda badass of Connor's actor to finnesse both the best and shortest role in the film, show his emotional range by playing both a sad emo version and a charismatic show toons version of the same character and then cut out of the film before he has to do anything else. Literally the perfect acting reel.
Conner's actor is actually really good! his name's Colton Ryan and he's the second lead in my favorite musical Alice by heart where he also shows incredible range. i hope he gets roles better than this lol
Resume Driven Acting
@@fawnlowell6094fun fact! Mike Faist was also involved in the Alice by heart workshops. It’s really cool how these two actors are connected - theatre is a small world!
@@toto.dreamer Ben Platt was involved too.
He turned up on an episode of Poker Face and I was like "Where do I know that guy from? Oh right, a movie I've never seen and only know about from a Jenny Nicholson video."
Evan always looks like he's trying to hide the fact that he's been bitten by a zombie
Hence the cast…🤔
he kinda looks like he's turning into a zombie with the weird puffed up kinda pale face, sweat, bulging facial muscles, and strange hunched over lurching walk
@@Crypted112Totally
I laughed out loud thank you
Like the banana from Community!
Movie could've been fixed if they added a scene right at the top where Evan looks to camera and says dryly: "I can't believe I was held back ten years in a row"
That make up was so bad, It might as well have been 10 years per grade.
I almost choked on my own spit reading this comment, thanks
@@braingirl9112 No, because you just add her to that same scene and she looks to camera and says: "Yes, I was also held back too, as well"
I can only read this in Jenny's deadpan delivery lol
He's the high school Van Wilder
Ben yelling “I LOOOOOOVE YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOU”, his face desperately attempting to escape his head, while slowly approaching Zoey as the camera stays entirely still is absolutely horrifying
Yeah, the cinematographer didn’t know what the hell they were doing.
This is how white guys act what's the problem
@@theconsciousobserver6829 Nononono. He never punched a hole in a wall.
@@dildonius they aren't all that spicy though
He looks a lot like Rick Moranis in Ghost Busters when he's possessed by the Key Master!
I know this video is a year old at this point, but I want you to know that if an orchard “closes”, they have to rip all the trees out. Because the trees could become a hotbed of disease and pests if left unattended, they have to be removed to protect other farms in the area. Due to the nightmare cost of that, orchards generally don’t close, they just get sold to other farmers.
Source: Apple farmers in the family
Thank you for the information
That's actually kinda interesting...
So what I'm hearing is that the orchard is another area where the musical makes no sense. Neat!
I mean, the information about orchards is neat.
To add to this: Whenever an orchard truly closes it is typically because the land has become unusable either because of poor management or extremely bad cases of pests like nematodes or some fungi, such as armillaria (this actually ruined a local orchard industry) that can wipe out entire stands and then live in the soil for many years after.
This would make it likely impossible to reopen the orchard, even for $100,000.
Source: I'm getting a degree in forest pathology.
Thanks for the info, really interesting how a huge acreage of a single crop can actually threaten others in the area. Hope our horrendous monoculture farming practices go extinct soon. Permaculture is the future!
I’m sorry but hearing the mom confront him for his lie, and then hearing him mumble “words fail” will never not be the funniest shit i’ve ever heard
To this day, whenever Im exasperated, I will warble "wOrds fAil, woOrdds fAil 😔" and no one will get it.
I love that bit, it's so good :D
time stamp bc this is also my favourite moment of the whole video: 50:56
"hey have you been lying to us about knowing our dead kid!?"
"WOrdS fAiL"
“Maybe Evan is not a nice boy. Maybe he’s just a quiet boy.” Another Jenny quote I will remember forever
Seen that one commented a few times hahaha that one she touched with a needle
YEEEESH LOL
Bro if people were better at knowing quiet boy ≠ nice boy
Truly a sentence that will live rent free in my mind indefinitely
This makes me _hmmmm_
"so you've got a bunch of normal looking characters looking at this big, hunching, mop-headed man. Eyes sunken into his artificially puffy face, warbling out high notes like an anxious Jiminey Cricket" is the most hilarious, out of pocket, spot-on roast of a single character I’ve ever heard I’m obsessed with the way you speak lmao
Jenny with a witty, devastating take-down is just as deadly as The Bride in "Kill Bill" with a sword- She DESTROYS.
Zoey: "what about the time he tried to break down my door, telling me he was gonna kill me for no reason?"
Jenny: "wow, I cant believe he told her it was gonna be for no reason."
Jenny is a professional piss taker.
My all-time favourite definitely doesn't show off Jenny's staggering facility of language as well as the one in the OP but it's still too good not to mention. When she did a reading of Colin Trevorrow's leaked script for Star Wars Episode IX, a new character was killed off and her response was, "he died the way he lived - wasting my time!"@@reneedailey1696
you skipped my favorite part of that line, the "in shambles!"
"So you've got a scene with a bunch of normal looking characters, and in shambles this big hunching mop-headed man, eyes sunken into his artificially puffy face, warbling out high notes like an anxious Jiminey Cricket"
(agreed that this line is amazing, it's one of my favorite lines from jenny ever)
Jenny is so funny cause you can just tell she’s been on the internet a WHILE. Like she’s been in these streets, an expert troll and counter-troll
I love how the inciting incident of this story relies on Evan having a therapist, and then that therapist promptly drops off the face of the earth for the rest of the story.
Oh my god, I've never thought about that... and imagine how much that could have helped him, having a person who he can be honest with and who is on his side through all of this - he could have told his therapist the truth right away, and they would probably have helped him navigate out of the net of lies he created, instead of making it progressively worse.
Are we sure that was even a licensed therapist? Did anyone see their license? Did the family just roll up to a place with a plastic banner hung over the door that said "Bob's Discount Therapy And Halloween Costumes"?
Evan or his mom did say that he stopped going to the therapist after everything happened though right?
yeah his mom says he skipped an appointment, its still weird that he doesnt see him throughout the length of the movie. it seemed like a regular session kind of deal
@@luna-mo3ol he says he doesn’t need his meds anymore, doesn’t mention the therapist though
Ben Platt saying no one else could possibly play Evan is made 1000% funnier when you remember that his fiancé also played Evan Hansen on Broadway
W H A T
WHAt-
I can not believe someone like Ben Platt could be in a health relationship
LMAO YES THAT'S TRUE
Christ almighty.
I liked him before but this is just not respectable lol
On stage, the hunched thing did definitely make him look truly like pathologically anxious and tense but I agree that up close and with everything else working against him, it does make him look like nosferatu
The movie really needed a scene of someone coming to see him in his half-lit bedroom and him just swiveling straight up into a standing position.
Not nosferatu lmao lm deadd
Now I'm imagining a much better version of this musical where Evan is a vampire and it's like a black comedy where he eats Connor and makes up this elaborate lie to try and maintain his cover as a human teen
@@flowerheit4512 That is already a better movie
Rare reference. I like it.
i thought the "his best friend died... you won't believe what he did next" screenshot was a funny little title card created for this video essay, when i saw it in the actual scene movie i just about lost my mind
Ah, okay, thank you! I wondered the same but I'm not about to watch this thing.
Wait, what?
It’s a *_WHAT_*
Dhar Mann vibes
@@brkh96 there probably is a dhar mann video with that exact title, even down to the punctuation
When Evan says he wants depressed kids to “go out and climb trees” am i the only one who feels that its a pretty morbid thing to say when he has just tried to kill himself by jumping out of a tree?
Yeah, that's...that's definitely a choice.
thank you!! I was thinking that the whole time like, did they forget about it, or what??
Which was a totally unnecessary and problematic revelation in the first place - the point of the cast on his arm isn't how he broke his arm - it's to show that it has no signatures - he has no friends. That's the entire point of his cast. Trying to shoe-horn in at the end an explanation for how he broke his arm serves no purpose but to muddle the story.
“go out and touch grass” is what he basically said
@@Char-mv3fc hey, grass is still cool if you're depressed. I like grass
I feel like in another universe there’s a musical about a teenage girl whose deeply troubled, emotionally (and occasionally physically) abusive older brother commits suicide, and his family discover that he was friends with a withdrawn boy in her class she barely knows.
Her parents invite this boy into their lives in a bid to try and understand their lost son better. The girl, full of confused feelings about her brother and how everyone is reacting to his death, gradually finds herself being drawn to the boy and then falling for him. And then it’s revealed the boy’s stories are lies and he was motivated to get close to the girl’s family because he’s had a secret crush on her.
Up until reading this comment it had never ocurred to me how good it would be to have Zoe's perspective on this. "Requiem" is a pretty solid song and I resonated with it a lot, that glimpse of the character that we're provided with then is quite human. Honestly I'd love to have someone reboot this with Zoe as the protagonist, even if it's just as fanfiction lol.
Ah, so it's like the version of Passengers everyone wishes we got... Damn.
This is Saltburn 🤣
And it’s actually good
The way this is 100x more compelling than dear Evan Hansen…
Must be a hard life being in the 20th grade.
Hahaha
This made me laugh out loud 😂
28:56 listen to Somewhere that’s green from little shop, then listen to part of your world from little mermaid
@@nickit7655I’m k
I CD
G G G h fed
hes the ultimate super senior
connor's family at thanksgiving in 5 years like "remember that creep with the caked on foundation that sang pop songs at us"
this made me laugh until I started choking and coughing, thank you
"Sang pop songs at us" - Hahahahaa
😂
😭😭😭
NOO THIS KILLED ME 😂😂😂
"Maybe Evan's not a nice boy. Maybe he's just a quiet boy." That whacked me across the face. It's pretty easy to confuse the two; very insightful
Michael Myers was a quiet boy…. 🎃
Yup, we get the two confused a lot
@@lordhirudo5311 LMAOOO 😭
Shinji was a quiet boy, but thats about it
Reminds me of Into The Woods. ‘You’re not good, you’re just nice.’ Coincidentally, that musical for having a far better song about not being alone.
Cutting together "This is Me" and "You Will Be Found" was so seamless that, because I'd never heard either song before and was tabbed out at that moment, I didn't even realize they'd been cut together. It just felt like one song. Masterful.
Same! I usually listen to Jenny’s videos in the background so I didn’t even realize the first several times lol
I have listened to both of them, multiple times, and it took me a good bit to realise, that's absolutely absurd
I did it. I watched the entire hour and 17 minutes. Now I feel very strongly about a production I never intended on seeing in the first place.
Honestly, the premise of the movie on its own was already enough for me to feel rather strongly and have no intention of ever watching it… but this was fun.
I watched it and I liked it. I disagree with virtually every point made in this video.
@@patrickdunachie1824 please elaborate on your positive opinion, don't wanna send any hate, just I want your perspective if you want to share it ofc
@@patrickdunachie1824 I disagree with this person. I just want to drink prune juice and show who boss
@@patrickdunachie1824 good for you.
"Maybe Evan's not a nice boy. Maybe he's just a quiet boy." Seeeeriously. A lot of people have trouble understanding that "quiet" or "shy" or "introverted" does not mean "nice". Just because someone's not loud and flashy about being a jerk doesn't mean they're not one.
Media has not been kind to "popular" kids. There's a reason why Legally Blonde was so groundbreaking and still stands as iconic.
El's friends are probably my favorite part of the movie because even tho they are ditsy, "superficial" bimbos they are unapologetically and wholeheartedly supportive of El in everything she does. They even come to her first court case.
@@colt9836 fr, I was a social chameleon in high school and hung out with the band geeks and football/cheer team. The popular kids didn't pay much mind to being negative, but every gd time I sat with my band mates they'd be under the impression that a cheerleader was talking shit about them or a jock was silently judging them. They bullied these people in response to the ASSUMPTION of bullying. When I told them that the after game parties were just hang outs where they made chocolate chip pancakes and played soul caliber they would NOT believe me. Media has brainwashed quiet kids into victimizing themselves lol.
@@colt9836fr, most popular kids I knew in school was honestly quite decent. The stereotype of the "bitchy mean girl" or the "meathead jock bully" is either an American thing or just a straight up projection of someone who was bullied or was jealous of certain people in school.
@@owenlealusually the reason someone is popular is because they’re pleasant to be around lol
@@colt9836 amazingly, Legally Blonde was also produced by Ben Platt's father
The whole premise of the story is someone with crippling social anxiety willfully creating a situation in which they are surrounded by emotionally compromised strangers, at the center of attention, and have to constantly worry about saying the wrong thing. This should be his kryptonite. These are all of the exact things he'd compulsively distance himself from. Then we're expected to believe he _thrives,_ when these conditions would be constantly wearing him down.
It's like they came up with this idea that the character would do this morally reprehensible thing, and then they tacked on mental illness to make the character sympathetic. It's a square peg in a round hole.
jeez I never thought of that but you're so right
Yes! I'm not the only one thinking that! Great summary, thank you!
One of many ways the story could've been improved would've been by having Evam crumble under the weight of the situation and confess. He and the whole situation would have felt much more believable if he'd just naturally come to find what he was doing unbearable, instead of needing to be prompted by [checks notes] a grieving family getting canceled on social media because of contrived misinterpretations of the alleged suicide note his "friend" leaked after being given it in confidentiality because she wanted to boost a Kickstarter to buy an orchard. The story tries so hard to make sure the audience sees Evan as sympathetic that they just end up making him look like a psychopath.
I feel like this could make an awesome dark comedy. Imagine him digging himself deeper into his worst nightmare as he keep lying to cover up for himself.
Honestly I think I would like the plot if Evan weren't an attempt at a sympathetic character & was purely a deceiving manipulative dude using his quiet demeanor to lure people into thinking he's a sad, gentle, shy teenager. I mean, people always say that sch**l sh**ters (I don't want the YT algorithm deleting my comment) are sad shy dudes. & of course not all sad shy dudes are manipulative but you're right that Evan's anxiety & insecurity, which we KNOW to be genuine, appear incongruous with his role as skillful manipulator relying on charm & social skills to deceive a grieving family. What if the anxiety & insecurity weren't genuine? I think that could be an interesting plot on its own.
i was forced to sing both “This is Me” and “You Will Be Found” in my high school choir, and they sounded so god damn similar that i felt like i was losing my goddamn mind.
Literally the exact same thing happened to me. As a bass, nothing can put into words my burning hatred for Broadway songs haphazardly slapped into choral arrangements
I am gradually discovering that apparently a universal experience for choir kids was having to sing these two songs
singing you will be found is a core memory for me and it is very much a negative one
Oh no
The line “maybe Evan is not a nice boy, maybe he’s just a _quiet_ boy,” legitimately gave me chills
Because it’s 100% correct. Evan isn’t the nice kid with social anxiety who’s alone because he has trouble connecting he’s the quiet kid who nobody talks to because everybody who does know him know he’s bad news and should be avoided
@@mrcritical6751 i think its more like no one knows he's bad news because no one talks to him, and we all just assume he's nice and quiet instead
@@mrcritical6751 yeah, it’s sad when people are like this, there was this girl who i thought was just kind but shy so i talked to her, then upon talking to her i realized why she didn’t have friends because she would try to look up bakudeku p0rn on my phone and show me even when i told her i was uncomfortable with that, she also is incredibly rude to teachers who are nice to her, she makes offhand rude comments about people, and doesn’t do any schoolwork but instead looks up my hero academia r18 things on school computers
@@meimae7804 These things doesn't even sound bad. Normal highschoolers do these kind of things all the time,nobody is perfect.
@@exosproudmamabear558 also another exol
This movie is unintentionally very good at depicting social anxiety because 28 year old Ben Platt in ghoulish teenager cosplay accurately depicts how I think I look in any given social situation
Omg yes 😂
😂😂😂
Pretty much.
That is why I do not dress that way, seriously.
😂😂 I do feel just as ghoulish and unsettling in front of people, it's true
Physically can't get over the way Ben walks and moves in this. It's like a horribly exaggerated version of someone with anxiety. Like they told him "nobody will be able to tell your character is anxious unless you walk around like you're missing a few vertebrae"
I think it may even be an attempt to make himself appear smaller. You know, so he doesn't look so much like a 45 year old man.
@@nonesuch6833 Boy, did that work well for him-
To be fair, in stage acting everything needs to be exaggerated for people who are way far back but good god why did no one tell him stage acting is a whole other ballpark than film
As someone with anxiety, I can confirm we are not missing vertebra, but my spine is so anxious it can't stay straight
Anxious people just walk with their head down, and maybe slightly quickly with bad posture
I think it’s so funny how Evan says “the only man that I love is my dad” in a homophobic joke line, only for multiple songs to mention that he isn’t in contact with his dad at all and hasn’t seen him in over a decade.
EVEN HATES MEN‼️🚨‼️🚨
I took that as being intentionally dissonant because it's like he's lying about one more thing but it's also just generally kind of a lazy lyric
He's secretly a latent homosexual.
It’s coming from Connors perspective too tho so it’s not that weird
in the play both connor and evan when they are singing that line, they emphasize this comment, highlighting the ironic fact that none of them get along with their respective father, it's intentional
“Pretends to know a girl’s dead brother so he can get together with her” is like some It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia shit
Woulda worked better that way. In fact it did; it’s called Heathers lol
Yeah, I can imagine a movie portraying something like that with the same energy as Jay and Silent Bob picking up chicks outside of an abortion clinic.
"The Gang Find a Dead Body"
He's got a Dennis vibe going on so that makes sense.
Eh, it's not quite that bad. He does try to tell people. They want badly to believe Connor had friends so they ignore him. It works much better in the play.
the guy who played Connor looks like he completely upstages Ben Platt and his character dies literally right away. his dancing alone is really great. I hope this movie doesn’t harpoon his career
I mean they TECHNICALLY killed the character off so they kind of did lol
If the dude’s career is dead then at least he got to hit the first woah seen on film
The actor was an understudy in the original musical, which is crazy because yes, he is obviously an extremely talented actor and in some ways that makes him perfect for the role of "guy who wasn't really given a chance and now he's just a character for others to control"
If he and the girl who played Alana get film careers out of this, it was all worth it.
@@adamwarlock1 Amandla was in Darkest minds, the hate you give, and was rue in the Hunger Games???? Lmfao
A version of Dear Even Hanson where his lie gets found out when Connor reveals that he faked his own death only for him to return at the beginning of the 3rd act
This is what I want
then itd be finally watchable
This made me want DEH to just follow the plot of His Face all Red somehow.
I would genuinely enjoy this so much, and i hate that you've put this idea in my head because it's an infinitely more interesting show that does not exist
You're thinking of Megamind
They probably would have gotten that award if they hadn't miscast Evan so badly. That role really was made for Colm Wilkinson and he was definitely robbed of the opportunity to play a teenage boy in the movie.
Honestly woulda loved that, very surreal, and you know Colm would dominate those songs
this film actually depicts anxiety very well, in that whenever i look at Ben Platt's red, sweaty, grimacing, unhinged face bulging outwards in every direction, it makes my anxiety fucking shoot through the roof
It would have been effective if they had a likeable, young (-looking) actor play the character as he is seen by other people and then Ben Platt could have played him as seen by himself.
Like, in reality, he's a typical teenager, but in his own mind he is Ben Platt.
thank you for making me burst out laughing wtf
Underatted comment
Omg thanks for this!!!! I wasn't expecting it but it resonates so much!!!
@@janeeyre1990 I am wheezing at this comment 🤣
What gets me is that they cut out "Good For You", which is arguably the best song in the original musical, because it's all about the side characters affected by his actions roasting the fuck out of Evan. It was an already hollow musical but at least that gave it some more substance; can't have any of that in the movie though!
Same! I was really disappointed when that song was cut, it's my favourite and it would've made the movie perhaps a biiit more tolerable for me than the hell that it is.
This comment made me go watch an animatic of it, and yep you’re right it’s the best song in the musical. Better than Sincerely Me, just cuz this one isn’t terribly sad and sinister with context.
literally. i refused to watch this movie even though i enjoyed the musical simply FOR the songs and FOR the reason that evan is absolutely the villain. i never pitied evan and appreciated how the musical showed that people who seem like they’re being really nice are actually fucking evil. but the way they totally bastardized the characters in the movie and tried to be like “poor baby :(((( poor little evan and poor alana and poor jared and poor conner :(((((“ like nah they might have mental illnesses but do not have immunity from their awful, AWFUL behaviors.
what i didn’t include in that other comment is that i enjoy good for you because it SHOWS how even people who were in the gig for their OWN profit are hurt by evan who was WORSE than them. it shows that evan really is the villain.
SAME!!!!!! good for you is one of my fav musical songs from any musical- and I was so disappointed to see it cut out :( not to mention having such a big impact on the other characters
I feel like Alana doesn't get enough shit for posting Connor's "suicide note" online. That's a fucking horrible and disgusting thing for someone to do. And she did it for MONEY. No one in this story is worse than Evan (and Jared, of course). But Alana slid into a close second place after she did that.
But the trees 🥺
The ironic thing is, I kind of prefer Alana in the stage musical. Because similar to Evan, she’s using Connor’s situation for her own self-glorification, but the stage show knows this.
@@osmanyousif7849 Also in the stage version, her posting the note was more of a knee-jerk reaction and her desperation to raise the money for the orchard was more palpable. In the film, she sits on it for hours and then posts it. She had hours to decide it was a bad idea and posted it anyway.
@@osmanyousif7849 The film takes a lot of the grit out of the secondary characters. In the stage version Jared is selling "RIP Connor" buttons, Alana comes off more as an opportunistic outcast who is trying to act like her being lab partners with Connor means something at all, Heidi dismisses Evan's feelings when she forgot about their taco night because she doesn't want to accept that she's letting him down. The film felt very sanitized compared to the stage version, like, they didn't want the characters to be too complex.
@@creategenius719 , agree with everything you said except for the fact that the movie didn’t want it’s secondary characters to “be too complex”. Because it’s made abundantly clear from Ben Platt and his daddy that they wanted all the focus to be about Evan, portraying him in the film as if he’s a victim who’s compelled to what he did instead of having any sort of autonomy.
Well good f**king job with that, Marc.
As someone who grew up during the musical era of Tumblr, I knew nothing about this musical or its plot, I just saw tons of people shipping Evan and Connor (I think?) Now that I know the plot I'm just completely dumbfounded as to why people were doing that.
Also, I've got to say, if my sibling died and some random kid started lying about being close with them to date me and I found out I would be going to jail for attempted murder.
it was certainly one of the more interesting sides of musical fandom lol. i was on tumblr at the exact same time and when i read the synopsis for dear evan hansen for the first time, i remember being so dumbfounded that this was the musical ppl latched onto. at least the gay jokes in the other popular musicals at the time weren't so cruel....
I remember thinking “aw that’s cute. Maybe it’s a musical about a couple of bff’s who like fall in love or something. I’m gay, I like that shit” and it ended up being a drama about suicide and exploitation and I felt really weird about myself afterwards.
@@gabriellegoodwin4422 i'd seen "sincerely me" and thought the same thing, i thought it was some goofy dark comedy thing based on the tone of that song. it was not.
it's wild how vastly different in tone that one singular song is, and honestly if they'd kept that dark comedy vibe throughout the whole thing i would have liked it a whole lot more, but they try to play all of this completely seriously and do a piss poor job.
i've always thought that the whole musical was in the same light as the sincerely me song because it's probably the only one that ever got into my circles enough to draw any attention. i was going to by the plot because the song made it look almost self-aware and darkly comedic. the shock i felt after watching this vid and learning that the rest of the play is drastically different lmai
So glad she’s come back to us in our time of need.
Yus
Return of the queen
With a numbered list, no less.
When the world needed her most, Jenny Nicholson vanished
Not the RUclipsr we deserve, but the RUclipsr we need.
This was the first Jenny video I'd seen and I didn't know she dressed thematically with her videos and I thought this was just how she looks
🤣
This was my first Jenny video as well. Didn't make the thematic outfit connection until about an hour in.
same 😭
this is so fucking funny omg
Same 🤪🤪🤪🫣🤣
the part where he flatly belts out “i love you” to zoey with his sickly mannequin yellowish face and his buggy eyes while he slowly approached her closer and closer... as a high-school age girl that would genuinely scare me and activated my fight or flight response just seeing it on a screen
I'm a 37 year old man and I almost dropped my phone when I saw it.
Fear Evan Hansen
@@booktales1687 The parody this movie deserves, and the audience needs
Can this movie be enjoyed ironically -- so bad it's good? Or is it too boring or unpleasantly bad?
I legit pulled away from my screen at that, it was terrifying.
I think one of the worst things about both the movie and stage musical is the fact that they have a character commit suicide, but everyone's attention is on what it means for themselves or what they can do about it. Not a single solitary person, with the worst offender being Evan himself, drew attention to the fact that Connor felt so horrible about himself and so hopeless about his direction in life that he would rather off himself than reach out for help to get better.
Not a single person, including his PARENTS, were wracking their brains trying to understand how he could have felt so terrible that death seemed more comforting than anything else. I know that in universe Connor was not a well-liked person, but you would think his family would have some degree of guilt, grief, and uncertainty about his suicide. The only character I can give a pass to in this regard is Zoe because the show does a good job explaining her conflicting feelings towards her brother and it would make sense for her to not mourn someone who emotionally abused her.
But his parents don't seem to be making any attempts to figure out why he drove himself to end it all, and no Evan's letter that they thought Connor wrote doesn't count because that gives an extremely vague reasoning for why he ends it all. The closest this show comes to addressing the topic of his suicide is the fight the Murphy family has right before "Words Fail" finally airing out their grief about his death and how yelling at each other about all the ways they failed him whether it was through enabling him, berating him, or a toxic mix of both. But that incredibly well written scene is brought to a screeching halt when Evan drops the bomb on them about the reality of his relationship with Connor.
Not even the people running the Connor Project seem to consider for one moment that maybe, maybe, the Connor Project should be a suicide prevention project and raising money to fund mental health programs, research centers for teen psychology, how to give suicidal teens the resources necessary to seek help as an alternative to the dark one they're thinking about, literally anything would be better than funding an apple orchard that only helps Connor and his family.
It is so rare for me to see a show mangle its moral messages and themes this disastrously and I honestly cannot believe no one was in the writers room to tell Pasek and Paul to take a hard look at the story they've written.
On this note, "You Will Be Found" is so hypocritical. How are we supposed to take seriously the message of "when it's dark people will be there for you", while Connor was alone to the point of committing suicide and is now having his memory overwritten with lies?
I think we're to assume that all the "guilt, grief, and uncertainty" happened normally as it would for any grieving family, and the musical focused on Evan's story rather than it.
You know, I think I should take a moment an recommend to you a film that tackles something like this much better. A film called World's Greatest Dad, starring Robin Williams.
In that movie, the character Lance Clayton is an underappreciated high school English/Poetry teacher, who has a passion for writing and yearns to become a famous author. He's a man who gets looked down upon by many, including his own son Kyle, who is an ungrateful misanthrope. One night, he finds Kyle accidently killed himself, and Lance, distraught by seeing his own son dead, especially in a very humiliating way, stages his death as a suicide, to salvage a bit a dignity for Kyle.
While nobody finds out what actually happen, a student manages to obtain Kyle's "suicide note" and publishes it in the newspaper (Because that's what any sane person would do, RIGHT!?!?!). But much to Lance's surprise, everyone starts to praise him for having such a "lovey intelligent son" like Kyle, claiming to be his friend, and become fascinated by him. Therefore, Lance takes advantage of this to get the attention he's always wanted, and decides to publish a fraud journal under Kyle's name about "things Kyle did, before his death". But something to note is that the movie knows that what Lance's doing is self-serving, especially if you think about the movie's title. But you are still able to empathize with Lance, even if what he's doing is wrong.
However that wasn't what the film's focus was about. You see, instead of the release of Kyle's "journal" having everyone connect with him and each other, it's made clear that's BULLS**T. Because the people who are claiming that they were connecting or inspired by Kyle, were the same ones who detested him (although, justifiably so...). They never knew him or cared about him, but are just hopping onto the bandwagon, using Kyle's death to signal their own virtue. The film's premise was meant to be a satirical black-comedy, on how people make the dead become celebrities and how everyone starts saying how they knew this person and cared so much about them, but what if these people were actually bulls**ting, behind our backs this whole time.
So World's Greatest Dad works because it's not trying to be some lecture about mental illness, but creates a premise that has a protagonist you empathize with, while getting some good laughs at how absurd the whole scenario is. But Dear Evan Hansen tries to lecture about mental illness, makes the protagonist someone you're expected to sympathize with (but actually want to strangle the living crap out of), and tries to be all emotional and dramatic with it's absurdity.
@@osmanyousif7849 Yay, thank you for this excellent summary and analysis! "World's Greatest Dad" is one of my top favorite films and it's very underrated (but you certainly need to be in the proper mood for it, emphasis on DARK comedy). And since I'm not a musical theater person, I had never heard of "Dear Evan Hanson," so when I first saw the movie trailer a few years ago my first thought was, "Oh, so it's like the plot of 'World's Greatest Dad' but a drama taken seriously?"
I've since learned, despite not seeing the DEH movie, that its execution is terrible and tasteless, and much like how Jenny talks about "Heathers" - "World's Greatest Dad" is another example of how this premise and satire works SO much better as a black comedy.
yeah, i love the song "requiem" but the dad's verse always rubbed me the wrong way, zoe had a valid reason to choose not to mourn connor, but "i gave you the world, you threw it away" is such a shitty reason to choose not to mourn your dead son. i understand anger is one of the stages of grief, and it's one that's not looked into as often as it should be, and grief _can_ oftentimes present itself in a "selfish" way, human emotions aren't perfect and all, but they completely fuck it up here imo.
for a show trying to preach about mental health, they seem to completely ignore things that could have helped connor's mental health or kids like him in favor of whatever the hell they thought they were doing here. it's as shallow as something like 13 reasons why
So Evan was able to find new meaning in his life after someone else's suicide, while people remember that person better than he actually was? Yeah that's not going to get misconstrued by a depressed teenager.
Oh my god you're right that's a horrifying point
I was looking for this comment before making itself.
oh jeez, I didn't even think of that. considering how many depressed people I know (including myself) who love musicals that might be an issue. Thankfully none of us actually like this one
To be fair, depressed teenagers (or generally anyone suffering from depression) will fit anything into a “the world is shit and possibly better without me” box. That’s what meds and therapy are for, because it’s simply not true, but the feeling won’t go away, even if everyone tip-toes around them.
@@ElliJelliZ We did when we were 14 or 15 years old, but by the time 2019 came around basically everybody in the fandom grew out of it.
He literally already won a Tony for the role. He needed to calm down and let the other kids play.
I think he's aiming for EGOT 😑
Sharing is caring
Still salty about that honestly when Great Comet was right there. “No One Else” alone has more integrity than the entirety of DEH.
@@rgs8970 he will fail
@@missmusicalsrock oh my god yes! I will die mad about the fact that it lost best musical! It’s got a clear story with intense emotion and a metric ton of bangers.
for those wondering why this even got made into a film and not a pro-shot (live recording of the stage show), it’s because pro-shots are not eligible for oscars. yup. that’s it. this film only exists to give ben platt an oscar. that’s literally it.
And definitely won’t get nominated for any
I hope to god it doesn't win one. But seeing how its being dragged by every critic, I feel confident in saying it probably won't
0 nominations. Lmao
Swing and a miss
Might get a Razzie though.
I have been a theatre actor for a large portion of my life. During my first film audition the first comment the Director made was "you're a theatre actor, aren't you?" He knew because everything I did was bigger than it needed to be. This was for a local film in Kentucky. How did a Hollywood Director not give Ben that note?
Because Ben's dad was the producer
@@JinStreams Fair point
In One Direction’s defence, Jenny, they did *try* to share the best song ever with us. They think it went ‘oh, oh, oh’.
They think it went ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’
They think it went ‘oooh’.
;D
I like to think Tenacious D's "Tribute" is about the same song as One Direction's song.
@@Stevonicus You stole my joke, you beautiful bastard.
Just to be clear, the best song ever would NOT go Oh Oh Oh or Yeah Yeah Yeah….or Ooh
@@LateCambrian there are a lot of people who think She Loves You is the best song ever
I've heard that... at least twice...
"The Dear Evan Hansen movie honestly feels like propaganda written by Evan Hansen himself," is honestly the best summary of the movie i've seen so far lol
Agreed
This statement was genius.
Evan Hansen propaganda. god
Dear Leader Hansen
This is what I’ve been saying for MONTHS, literally ever since I saw the damn thing.
Can't believe they cast 54 year-old Fred Armisen as the teenage lead here, but kudos to him for trying something new
THIS COMMENT HAS ME ROLLING
Thank you, I was wracking my brain trying to figure out why he looks so unsettling
Thank you for your help
This comment should be illegal!🙊
@@funpolice5821 What are you? The fun poli- oh SHIT.
I’m confused about how the murphys get doxxed and harassed because their mentally ill son felt lonely, but Evan comes clean with the lie and kinda just walks free to live his life? That shit would follow him to his grave
It really shines a light on a sort of ego of whoever wrote this play, either from a single person or a writing team
“flustered child makes fool of himself after friend dies by suicide” took me OUTTT
"Yeah, this'll make great content"
I expected something about Evan ending up in a cringe compilation but this was even better 🤣
This and the Hannah Montana vocals over the house killed me
This will do numbers on r/cringe
"Top 11 Idiot Children Doing Cringeworthy Things While Publicly Grieving"
The heart-warming lockdown content that the clickbait algorithms have decided we need right now
To quote a letterboxd review I saw: “I loved the part where he visits the beach that makes you old”
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
😆 LITERALLY THOUGH-
Jenny’s straightforward and fervent refusal to take the stupid orchard Kickstarter seriously is giving me life.
May i recommend a real good education-channel;
just cause i have the silly hobby of spreading Education?
No but like why should she
"What will this money do?? Will it manifest a new farmer?" 😂🤣
@@nenmaster5218 recommend recommend recommend
@@tychopanda Binge 'Oversimplified' and 'Sci Man Dan' in a rotation-order (one, then the other, than the other again, than switching again, and so on) and then you tell me how it was!
Coming back to this video because there was a school shooting at the college right where I lived in 2023 and 3 students’ lives were taken by the gunman. The community theatre I was a part of held a small candlelight vigil as an act of solidarity for the victims. The song they chose to sing: You Will be Found from Dear Evan Hansen. I bit my tongue of course and tried my best to get in the right mindset, since everyone around me was very emotional and sincere. However, I don’t think I can think of a more morbid song to sing in honor of students who were literally chased down by a gunman than “You Will be Found”
wow how did nobody say anything? thats impressive
Ooof. I'm so sorry
Oh my god 😭
The most culturally important thing to come out of the Dear Evan Hansen franchise was Rupaul thinking the main character's name is Dear.
LOL I have no idea what the context of this is but that cracks me up
WHAT DDSDGHIK
@Eduardo De Lara Season 10, I forget which episode. Ru was talking to Miz Cracker about opening up or being vulnerable or something.
Ben Platt who plays Dear in Dear Evan Hansen
absolutely
Adults playing teenagers isn't an issue for me, but he just looks SO old in this movie that without context it looks like it's about a married man who's going through a mid-life crisis and is trying to get the neighbor's teenaged daughter to hook up with him.
He looks younger outside of the movie! For some reason having a beard makes him look closer to being a teenager.
It's because beards hide mouth wrinkles. A neatly trimmed beard can make you look younger.
@@addstrat1207 Interesting. I always thought guys looked younger after shaving their beards.
He also just looks… normal outside of the movie.
He looks like a slightly younger Dennis from It's Always Sunny. Which is not the look you want, unless you're going for the psychopath angle.
In 'The Politician', which was filmed the same year I believe, Ben Platt plays a teenager and passes well enough as one. He's still clearly not a teenager, but it's more forgivable due to the hair and makeup helping out. The makeup and the hair in this movie are just not it whatsoever. Even if I forgave the hair, THE MAKEUP plssss they didn't even try
I’d be more interested in a musical titled “Dear Mr. Farmer,” about a farmer who bought an orchard, realized it wasn’t his thing, closed it, and then all of a sudden has to figure out what to do with some random Kickstarter’s $100,000 donation.
That actually sounds amazing.
That reminds me of a story i know.
This one dude worked all his twenties as a delivery man for companies that sold non alcoholic beverages, and then climbed up until he got to some important position still in the delivery area for Coca Cola.
Years later he got fired and thought that it was a nice moment to start farming since he used to love it so much as a hobby.
Turns out he hated it as a full time job, so he sold all his animals and lands and consumed by his resentment towards Coca Cola for laying him out, bought a big factory in the middle of a big city, miles away from his home. He moved there with all his family and started an non alcoholic beverage business just to compete with Coca Cola. He named his trademark soda Manaos, and it's one of the preferred sodas in argentinian homes.
@@rosiebud7922 woah that's wild
That is legit a great premise for a film, wow
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Honestly horrifying to me that the movie never fully grapples with the fact that Evan effectively erased Connor from memory. Like his parents will never remember their son again without it being tainted by Evan's lies.
It's not like it was basically ok otherwise. I'm not sure you can make the memory worse really. In fact, by giving the family a villain to hate, it might help ease the guilt of failing to save their son's life. They will instead remember the asshole who came and effed with their lives for no good reason
@@skeetsmcgrew3282it’s still really messed up and adds even more trauma to an already grieving family
No honestly that is probably the scariest part of the entire story. Imagine being dead and some random guy you barely know starts telling your family completely fictional stories about you to a point that they believe in a completely different view of who you were as a person. At that point, even if that view is ‘better’, your own legacy isn’t yours. Your life and the person you were in it is practically meaningless because the story outlives the author
@@guldmattbb473 But he was, like, an awful person by most accounts. Maybe caused by severe mental illness but that doesn't really excuse abusive behavior. So is a hideous truth really better? Like, I'd rather be entirely forgotten than be remembered as a troubled monster
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 the thing is that you have the choice to decide you'd want the lie more than your actual legacy. Evan essentially took that decision away from him completely after the fact and there's no way to ever ask him if he was ok with his reputation being tied to a guy he's barely spoken to before who only really did it to get into his sister's pants.
“YA movies that handle suicide poorly” is really its own genre huh
The channel Caleb Joseph has a great video breakdown of this
i guess so lmao
@@vanessaajohn which video was that one?
My thoughts exactly
*wHEEZE*
This show's synopsis would make a crazy AITA post
NTA OP you meant well.
"a guy from my highschool died and now everyone thinks I'm his best friend and I'm dating his sister under the pretense that I am the only person who knows what her brother was like but I don't know a thing about this guy, AITA?"
@@chocomelo454 "okay so i know that title sounds bad.... BUT"
@@stumpcluber "HEAR ME OUT."
@@chocomelo454 LMFAOOO
Honestly the Naruto run is probably the only accurate teenager thing Evan did in the movie.
better characterization than any other moment in the film
Sometimes it's fun to watch trash, to pick out those brief moments when the actors who probably knew it was going to be trash decided to just go with it and got the performance spot on.
Unfortunately this is not that kind of trash.
This movie would have been at least 20% more funny if Evan had a flashback to him on a swing
This isn't especially relevant, but more comments will only drive up Jenny's place in The Algorithm so what the heck:
Whenever a Naruto run comes up, I think of a video I saw ages ago of self-taught free runners using a professional gymnastics gym in front of trained ballerinas.
One of the free runners did a Naruto run at a vaulting horse, and a ballerina commented that his form was "interesting."
44:44 for anyone wondering
after my brother and my dad died i used to struggle with insomnia really bad (combination of night terrors and PTSD)... i used to put on this channel and listen to it as i tried to fall asleep. it really helped. her voice is really soothing. shit helped me through some rough times. i love your channel. kudos mate.
Hope you’re doing better mate, i really do
jenny constantly calling him dear evan has the same energy as ru paul saying “and ben platt, who plays dear, he gave everything”
I REMEMBER THAT!
I tink you mean Race, the host of Rupauls drag race :v
This was THE funniest moment ever on Drag Race. I like rewatching that scene just to cheer myself up on hard days.
Jenny From Jenny Nicholson
this type of humour absolutely kills me every time. Reminds me of that one tumblr post that talks about wanting to be brave like Brave from Disney’s Brave
“Maybe Evan is not a nice boy. Maybe he’s just a quiet boy.” Oof, that got real.
Ya that was a great line
He’s not the nice kid dealt a bad hand and looked down upon by the rest of the school, he’s the kid that people know what he’s like tell you to leave him alone
Sounds like decent ish story. The whole new girl in town, think the nice guy outcast is bullied and different, befriends him only to find out he is actually an outcast cos he sucks.
So… twilight, or Heather’s.
Never mind
Was looking for this quote called out. As someone who had to learn this lesson directly a few times...there are low-key problems with socializing that all awkward or socially-withdrawn people are sensitive and nice or need you, a little girl, to be their friend. Nope - don’t ignore the hair raising on the back of your neck.
@@mfenn7325 this reminds me of how after school shootings, shooters are often characterized as sad lonely kids who would have done nothing wrong if their classmates had just befriended them. The way that attitude pushes off the prevention of school shootings on the very victims has always made me extremely uncomfortable. Just the fact that some people would expect a child to go out of their way to befriend someone who is already unstable, possibly violent and often harbors some form of bigotry, in order to not get brutally murdered by that person is appalling.
Jenny has the incredible ability to make me feel very strongly about random topics that I was previously apathetic towards
This is entirely why I watch Jenny Nicholson and Sarah Z videos.
Honestly she should get hired to make propaganda
Me too. I don’t give a rat’s rear about Dear Evan Hansen. But I’ll listen to Jenny talk about toothpaste brands for an hour
Ikr. I literally wouldn't give a shit otherwise.
@@Flutterblushie I've watched her vampire diaries video 3 times start to finish. I've never seen an episode of the actual show.
If they want to reboot Garfield as a live action musical, I nominate Ben Platt for Jon.
Y E S
How about Chris Pratt
I was thinking he looked familiar..
@@DanialTarki How about Hugh Jackman?
@@glucoseguardian9999Sure why not
28:02 this is actually horrifying he looks nowhere near a child and the camera is angled in a way that makes him look like he's towering over the audience while he creepily shuffles forward with that sinister looking hunch and bulging eyes sing-yelling I LOVE YOU this feels like a horror movie scene
I feel like Zoe should have been shrieking and then it ends with him getting arrested.
Thankfully I saw this comment just before the timestamp so I was prepared for it.
@@yuarentlucky arrested for what, being horrifying?
Humanity received a grim reminder.
@@Goodbutevilgenius Yes.
I've watched multiple reviews of this and here is my mildly informed conclusion.
"Dear Evan Hansen" is as much a musical about mental illness as "The Little Mermaid" is a musical about hoarding.
LMAO FOR REALLLLLLLL JAJAJA
Honestly… yeah.
or as much as Phantom of the Opera is about ghosts
@@arob3800 I mean the novel and parts of the Lon Chaney movie involve “ghosts of the Phantom’s past” ie being haunted by memories.
Lmao yeah, like, it's present in the story and acts as the catalyst for the main plot, but the narrative doesn't bother trying to convey any opinions or messages about it
Jenny's room is slowly beginning to look more and more like a children's reading nook at a small bookstore and I love that
+
silent reading time core
Her giant library spider gets to finally be in a natural enclosure again
The GFuel fridge ties it all together
I really want to know what is written on the animals on the door.
“Sweaty 90s sitcom dad made of melting wax” is just a devastating combination of words
They're only referencing trees this much to set up for their sequel, which will be a crossover with the Lorax.
And also, we find out in a surprising twist, The Happening.
Casting Connor as the Onceler could finally break Tumblr once and for all
Maybe we'll finally find out what happened to the Entwives while we're at it. 🤔
Evan has no confidence and severe anxiety yet is able to give an incredible speech at Connors funereal and continuously lie to his family
Well to be fair about the anxiety part; I have that too and others do too and the did display him as struggling to even make that speech in both the play, movie, and novel. Anxiety doesn't stop you from making a speech in total, you CAN do it but it's just so difficult and takes calming down to realize that you have it/you can do it. Sometimes you can push through your anxiety, especially in the moment where Evan found himself/talked about himself (f*cked up since it's someone else's memorial) and finally got to tell people how he felt. You can make a speech without confidence, and he did lie without the confidence and anxiety, anxiety just made it harder for him to handle the monster he created and stressed him out even in the novel. It was just the matter of him finally cracking, you can be a terrible person/lie even with severe anxiety.
A lot of people with anxiety are compulsive liars, where they're so used to lying, it doesn't trigger a stress response anymore and telling the truth can even feel more stressful. That's one of the few things that's actually realistic about the portrayal of mental illness.
@@juliamavroidi8601 yeah, the speech is unrealistic but the continuous lies are pretty normal. At least I lie daily and I too have anxiety. Lies can be comfortable since you're not exposing a reality you might find shameful or embarrassing. We also lie to appear normal.
@@alemunnoz agreed, though in my experience even though I'm used to lying and can do it fairly well, it still stresses me out to hell and back, but telling the truth is even worse. Quite literally choosing between hell or high water.
I have high social anxiety, and I am a terrible liar. I can't tell a good lie when it's important, and people can usually tell immediately when I am lying. I was also raised to not lie, and I'm always worried to lie to people because I don't want them to think I'm a fake deceptive person. it sounds like I'm the weird one here though.
"Maybe he's not a nice boy, maybe he's just a quiet boy"
Love this line, never seen the movie or play but your videos are great even with out context
every single character who's ever inspired a think piece about Nice Guy Syndrome can be summed up with this line
It just made me think of Bertholdt from Attack on Titan, but that's a me thing.
The audiobook is on RUclips. With all of the movie reviews, I listened to the book and I agree that describes Evan. Anxious af? Yes. Pos? Absolutely.
@@mastermarkus5307 Replace “quiet” with “sweaty”
@@mastermarkus5307 Bertholdt is a nice boy. 😡
when i was in middle school my best friends boyfriend broke up with her and then minutes later confessed his feelings to me by making me listen to “If I Could Tell Her” on the school bus. good times
That’s so messy oh my
I’m so sorry, I feel bad for laughing! 😂 Poor you! Your poor friend!
Lmao primary school "relationships" were extremely entertaining back in the day. Pretty much just little kids acting out whatever melodrama we saw on tv. Some people never grow out of that though, and thats a shame.
The absolute priceless irony of rewriting a character as gay in order to justify the dated homophobic jokes he makes while at the same time removing practically half of his screen time and agency will never be topped
Oh he’ll be topped 👀
@@muffinsdawg 😂😂😂😂😂
The audience laughing at homophobic jokes too but now reflecting on it, maybe they tried to add them in to make us dislike him, idk. I guess I have a different sense of humour like dark humour but dont think anyone really should be mocked like that for who they are? Idk.
I've only heard the songs, and read it as "maybe one or both could _be_ gay but are too scared to come out"
That's just me, though, an overly optimistic person learning and understanding the whole spectrum of it all.
@@muffinsdawg The character is a teen. Control yourself you sicko.
There's this one scene in the Broadway show that gets overlooked a lot, that made me feel like the start of Evan's lie was more rooted in something recognizable as borne out of real anxiety and not just callous desires: Early on after Connor's suicide, he's called into the school office and sits alone with Connor's parents while they grill him about the "suicide" note and Connor's name on his cast, crying and quite literally BEGGING him to tell them that Connor was his friend. It would be very easy for him to feel like NOT lying to them in that moment would be re-traumatizing them.
Exactly! Pretty sure that was also depicted in the movie. Like, that was the whole reason why Evan lied about it all, why all of that happened. It happened because Connor's mom wouldn't give him a chance to explain even though he tried to tell her at first that the letter wasn't from Connor. He literally even said that Connor didn't write it before Cynthia was begging Evan to tell her they were actually friends. So essentially, it was her fault that all started
@@luna-mo3ol Exactly! It makes me so mad that Evan was basically talked-over for that entire scene :( I really related to that, sadly enough
I still don't agree with what he did but you bring up a very good point
@@luna-mo3ol yeah every time I see people criticize the story it seems like they just brush past that. The whole story is set up where at first the Murphy’s understandably draw their own conclusions and Evan, riddled with anxiety and not knowing how to tell the truth to grieving parents, just lets them. And their conclusions lead to them asking things of him that require him to lie and then he doesn’t know how to end it. I know what he did was awful but the entire framing shows he didn’t do it on purpose, so idk why so many people criticize it as if he did.
@@cookieaddictions Because intentions don't matter when the impact is so damaging.
Intent vs impact is very real, and his selfish pursuit of the dead kid's sister and using her brother's death as a way to connect with her...That WAS deliberate.
Anyone with- anxiety, depression, etc.- The bad things we do don't just get excused because we didn't intend them
this was so cathartic to watch, i attempted suicide in middle school (and failed obviously lol) and didn't tell anyone and then in high school a bunch of my friends got into this stupid musical. i couldn't explain why i found the whole premise and execution of the musical so awful at the time, so seeing it all laid out and then painstakingly ripped to shreds felt incredible.
I’m sorry you went through all that, including your classmates bullshit. I’m glad this could help a bit.
I'm glad you got through the tunnel and you are right to point out how this musical/movie handles the topic of suicide with the delicacy of a mack truck.
I’m glad you’re still here and that you got to appreciate this epic shredding of a musical movie
I'm so glad you survived and are hopefully doing better now! You are loved, by God and your loved ones!
I'm glad something good could come out of a musical that troubled you. I've been suicidal before and my heart is with you.
it's been two years, i've watched this video about a hundred times, and i *just* realized that jenny calling this video a "tribute" that she wants to "go viral" is a reference to the plot of dear evan hansen and how dear evan's tribute speech goes viral
Every song is triggered by someone walking up to Evan and pressing E.
It's sensitive to context
amirite?
I wonder how many songs were accidentally triggered by someone trying to pick something off the ground too close to him.
@@NonsenseWithGlasses too many they’re like unskippable cutscenes
What's E?
@@kimifw58 The E key in a keyboard, famously used as the interaction button in many pc games
As someone who has suffered at the hands of my mentally ill brother, when I first heard 'If I Could Tell Her" I cried because I didn't know the context, and the idea that my brother cared about me at ALL felt so good. After learning the context i was horrified. The entire show reads like it could be a Criminal Minds episode.
I can relate. When I first heard "Requiem" I thought the musical was about the sister and how she doesn't know how to cope with the death of her abusive brother, while everyone expects her to grieve like nothing was wrong... and then I found out Evan is the main character!!! and he convinces her her brother did no wrong actually!!!! A disaster. I could no longer listen to "Requiem" to cope with my own situation, knowing how the story goes
@@mathelaw8994 I think that’s part of the quandary. The song is beautiful. But that also rings hollow because Evan is lying through his teeth. But he’s doing that initially to bring comfort.
@@mathelaw8994 i felt the same way about requiem but it reminded me more specifically of my relationship with my dad. she had the right idea, she was allowed to be mad at her brother and struggle with how to mourn someone you didn’t even get along with. but evan used his OWN PERSONAL FEELINGS TOWARDS HER?? to change the narrative. like, dare i say it, isn’t that gaslighting? a little?
Following the sister’s story, coming to terms with the grief of her brothers death while also struggling with what he did to her and the fact that she’ll never get closure, would’ve been a much better story. The dynamic of caring about someone who’s hurt you, or having to deal with other people propping up and celebrating an abusive person just because they’ve died, is very relatable and real to a lot of people. More powerful, more interesting, the works. But no. We get… this.
Weirdly enough, the song that i resonate with the most is good for you. My mom abandoned me and i feel the lyrics very strongly in response to her actions. Heidi deserved better
"Maybe [he]'s not a nice boy. Maybe he's just a quiet boy." Actually this is amazing advice for teenagers. Just because a boy is quiet doesn't mean he's kind.
Generally speaking I don’t think the assumption, especially in high school settings, is that quiet people are nice
I'm a quiet gal, but people always think I'm a bitch because I don't talk constantly. I've been told I'm not by the people I do talk to though, I don't think that "quiet kids are nice" Is a common thought
@@goshdangit4503 Maybe it's part of the trope where everyone is wary of the quiet kid but they're actually really nice once you get to know them? And so people just projected that onto Evan? Idk.
@@goshdangit4503 they said “boy”, it doesn’t really apply to girls
@CowoO often as long as a boy isn’t loud and obnoxious and rowdy, people do start to speak about him like he’s a nice, good person- their teachers, their peers, even people’s parents. this happpens even if they know nothing about him and haven't interacted with him, people just assume those kids must be of good character.
there are exceptions: guys people see as threatening, creepy, or weird. eg. punk & goth boys don't receive this treatment as much.
Jenny is older than Ben Platt and yet she’d make a more convincing teen boy.
“It looks like his face is trying to escape his head” is honestly way too accurate lmao
that absolutely sent me
Anyone does that 😒
@@arekusandora7091 I've never seen 1 human being doing that up to this movie
reminder that Ben is dating someone who also played the role of Evan onstage which makes the idea that he thinks no one else can play the role so much funnier
WHAT??
@@littlemau1360 there are actually at least two sets of Evan Hansens dating!
This is hilarious.
@@aelrah omg
This makes me think of Jenna from 30 Rock dating Paul who does drag of her
My friend told me that anyone who’s fighting demons should go see this movie. Well I watched it and now the only demon I’m fighting is the ghoulish image of Ben Platt’s scream-singing face haunting me whenever I close my eyes.
when I tell you I died-
Lmfao best comment I’ve read so far down here
I recommend it to anyone fighting demons because no matter how dark your intrusive thoughts are, nothing will be scarier than Ben Platt in a mullet with a dozen layers of foundation falling to his knees in aginst because he's is a tree and literally neurodivergent and a minor :(
HAHAHAH
I was eating while reading this and choked on my cinnamon roll in laughter
it's crazy seeing how normal ben platt looks in an interview, only to cut back to the movie where he looks like he's about 90% of the way through transitioning to the dark side. evan hansen is one padawan massacre away from shooting lighting out of his cast and turning into a toad.
The fact that so many broadway actors are gay and as a community in everyday life they constantly acknowledge this but then on stage any suggestion of queerness is usually laughably out of the question has always been so bizarre to me.
Disney was a really big part of Broadway and still has a hold in it so I wouldn’t be surprised if that had something to do with it
Including Ben Platt (!)
Broadway is a deeply commercial medium. And as we see way too often with Hollywood, "commercial" = heteronormative narratives that don't disturb the masses, or at least their conservative governments and censor boards. Broadway is aiming to get the tourist set and make money on tours, that means not ruffling any feathers and sticking to what has worked before.
@@distortedguitarist81 AND Benj Pasek?! WTF Dear Evan Hansen team??
Hi , gay here. Ironic homophobic jokes are so prevalent in the community. I actually argued about it and people told me it's coping mechanism or some shit. Like yeah I get it but saying you want to commit hate crime because Frankie Grande looks gay af is just distasteful to me
"the Dear Evan Hanson movie feels like propaganda written by Evan himself" - another knockout line.
Or his daddy, the producer.
I’m treating this as canon; the movie is the result of stage Evan trying to recuperate his image after becoming rich from the lie, then getting cancelled for it
Jenny has a lot of knockout lines here
@@PKEin a bit like the weird FNAF lore where the video games were made by the business in order to mock the idea that the murders had ever happened.
@@PKEin in universe Connor’s family made the musical to expose Evan for the asshole he is so Evan using all his orchard money brought the movie rights and made the movie adaptation to make himself look better
how fucked is it that i was 100% ready to believe that ben platt was 45 years old
he's not?
@@batabids He's 28 I think.
@@goosegas2087 h o w
@Linda Les More like how Tom cruise looked at 50, which was 37
Absolutely this. And until the clips in this of him in interviews I had thought he at least *looked* way older like this in day to day life, but apparently not? They just… seriously managed to somehow make him look *way* older than he does normally, while specifically trying to make him look way younger? Like it just completely backfired, and yet no one involved went “Ok, this isn’t working, what if we just didn’t do this and he looked 27 instead?”. It’d be awkward but still better than this! Truly amazing work.
with how they literally convey every single lyric with framing or evan's hand motions I think they cut "anybody have a map" because they couldn't get a good map prop
In the novel, it ends with Evan still intensely guilty for what he had done, but choosing to seem optimistic despite his melancholy inside. He's also taking a gap year. Also in the novel, in the midst of his lie he ends up climbing under his bed one night to see where he stored his cast just to prove to himself Connor had actually existed rather than just been a figment of his imagination. I think that's an interesting point because it seems in the novel he projected onto Connor so bad that he was convinced he was talking about his own death.
He also did the most correct thing by giving Miguel the chance to talk to the Murphy’s, the best chance that family has to truly understand the son they lost. There’s so many good moments from the source, but they go unused
@@heath6802 honestly the book was actually better in some regards
@@heath6802 whos Miguel?
@@onettaviator5396 (Exactly!) anyway, sarcasm aside, Miguel is a boy who Connor was unofficially dating back at his old school before he got kicked out and relocated to the school Evan and he did in the movie/musical. Connor’s reason for suicide in the book is actually given. That day was super stressful for him, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was he texted this old boyfriend to reconnect and never got a text back. He died thinking Miguel didn’t care about him. When Evan and Miguel talk at the end of the book, Miguel really wishes he replied faster and didn’t realize how important it really was to do so in that moment.
In the book, Connor actually had someone who loved him. Evan rewrote himself into the narrative as that person, not thinking if someone like Miguel maybe existed. He assumed that Connor had nobody, but it’s not true at all! Just another layer to add to Evan making Connor’s life all about himself.
Yeah, wasn’t the book only written after the show had been on Broadway and was supposed to address the legitimate issues people were bringing up back then?
The most frustrating thing to me is that Evan, as written in the show, does make for an interesting character. I knew a guy like him in high school. The only difference was that the person who committed suicide wasnt real. He'd made up a brother none of us had met. And kept up lies for years about him until telling us he had died. Which we only found out when someone reached out to his mom to give condolences. The shock and horror of being lied to like that, the anger, how it affects the mental health of everyone involved, how deeply saddening it is to watch someone self destruct like that-it would all make for some fantastic drama. Its too bad the show wanted to have its cake and eat it too. Evan didnt need to be good or fixed in the end. He just needed to be willing to work on himself.
You're so right, but I don't think it seemed Evan was presented as "good" or "fixed" in the Broadway show by any means? After all, he loses everything. Which seemed like justice, but not too harsh a punishment for a mentally ill child who did not seem to have malicious intentions. And he clearly still is continuing with his therapy, since he's still doing the note-writing exercise.
@@alexbennet4195 oh for sure, he was no hero. And if you just listened to the soundtrack, the final number where he is writing another letter to himself does give that impression. But I think the show itself fell a little flat. Im not a fan of the orchard plot in general, so it didnt feel like everything came together at the end.
I agree that it’s an interesting plot. I’ve also met people that would tell lies and make up “people” to spice up their tales. My issue with this film is the framing seems to be that…the lies were for the best? like, it’s supposed to be an inspiring tale of sorts? It’s too jarring for me. Does the broadway show come across like that too? a cheerful inspiring tale of sorts?
you're absolutely right - I knew a few kids in my school who seem to be like Evan's character.
@@PunkExMachina nah dont worry. in the musical pretty much everyone evan's talked to hates him. the only one who doesnt hate him in the end is heidi and she still got really hurt by him. i think the end is more about how you are able to grow and move on from being a terrible person, not that everyone is gonna forgive you if you lie to them
I love Jenny absolutely *ripping* into the way Platt looks in this film. Everything said is spot on- he is absolutely menacing throughout the entire movie😭
One of my favourite descriptions: "It looks like his face is trying to escape his head"
I’ve watched this video many times and that line always makes me burst out laughing
Seriously, re: his face trying to escape his head, the comparison between everyone else's performance and his performance was almost jump scare caliber, lmao
She bullied him harder than Connor
@@FlyNAA If anything happens to Jenny, Ben Platt is going to talk about she was "his best friend" who "killed herself".
I know this video is about dear evan hansen but the ridiculously loud splat sound effect that they added to javert's suicide in tom hooper's les mis (at 13:26) will never fail to completely destroy the emotional impact of the scene and turn it into a gruesome comedy. Like i think when i first saw it i laughed out loud, its just awful
It's such a bizarrely gruesome choice for Javert to jump into a brick thing like that anyway, when in the original novel and presumably most versions of the musical he drowns himself. I think part of the impact of the suicide is also in how intentional drowning has to be, like you have to stop yourself from doing things to make you survive, which I think shows the audience just how dramatic of a change in Javert this is, that he's able to so fully resign himself to death after being so dogged previously.
Yes exactly! And the area in Paris he drowned himself in the book has nothing like that brick wall he hits. When I traveled there I wanted to see the area that Victor Hugo imagined the story in and the movie changed it for the worse.
I absolutely lost it with the family sternly talking in shock ar Evan lying the whole time only for him to warble "WoOOooOOords Fail. WooooOOrds Fail." It's the funniest thing imaginable. This entire movie/production seems like such a janky disaster. Thank you for covering this mess!
SAYING "words fail" is the most unnatural, inhuman, ridiculous possible way if getting across your inability to think of what to say. Its like an AI was forced to write dialogue after being fed every bad musical ever written
ok i gotta say words fail is incredible as a song on its own and watching ben platt perform it brings me to tears every time. and i havent seen this movie yet. BUT i can totally see how they could ruin it and i’m so sorry they did bcuz out of all moments in the musical that one is my favorite so how dare they lol
50:53 timestamp for it in the video
The idea of Evan's lie crumbling around him and his solution is to irl sing a little ditty had me wheezing
Assassins sounds like the musical for you. They talk about murdering people in song! And it’s not dark like Sweeney Todd, all of them are happy and light-hearted.
I lost it at that point.
@@reillymcwriting Oh wait till you hear about the cell block tango
The exterior shot kills me. It’s got comedic timing like a neighbor is walking by and is confused why he can hear their three part harmony from the street
they’re about to reveal somebody got a ticket for parking outside
@@sourpatchordnance2249 oh yes, the suburban neighborhood traffic cop is listening
as an actual victim of sibling inc*st lemme tell ya, it is never endearing to hear that your abusive brother speaks fondly of you to his buddies, it’s creepy as shit 😭😭😭
It's described as a coming-of-age movie except the age he's coming to is 45.
@@ruthie8785 Nooooo Ruthie NO!!!
..but also hilarious!
@@ruthie8785 you mean it's the the age he's coming IN ?
You stitching together “this is me” and “you will be found” literally blew my mind lmao
Time stamp? :)
@@Andyyoureastar 28:50
@@ekataluitel6669 thank u!!!💗💗💗
OMFG same! I was gaping for the whole time she played that lmao~
"Oh My God!"
The only thing this film did was make me feel for Connor, and extensively troubled teen who had so much difficulty with communication and mental health that no one in his life was able to understand him. To such an extent that some random kid could string his family on with complete fabrications. The actor for Connor did a great job and it would have been more interesting to have the story been about ghost connor watching this happen, and struggling with the effects he had on his family and the gross self serving things that evan is doing.
The book is doing that. A little. It has ghost connor at least, and we learn more about him and his home life and I *think* also his perspective on what happens now. Not sure on the last part it's been a while^^'
might be misremembering but i believe the book does that a bit? there's chapters from the perspective of Ghost Connor (and we learn a bit about his past this way too as he looks back on his life.)
edit: oop someone already said it lmao
Almost feels like his ending of life wasn't about him , Evan made it about Evan
@@bazooka-sharks-parker yeah it feels like they could have gone somewhere with that maybe but no nvm