Jun 23, 2022
A review of tick, tick...BOOM!
It’s Pride month, and what better way to celebrate than to indulge in film and books featuring queer characters. tick, tick…BOOM! is far from my favourite in this category, but it is worth watching for a few reasons.
Andrew Garfield is an amazing on-screen crier. He appears to emote, and inhabit the life of Jonathan Larsen pretty effortlessly. That being true, most of the acting around Garfield fails to shine in any noticeable way. It’s like they are simply there to provoke or inspire reactions, and watch him perform, the way Larsen is asking people do of his theatrical, and the way they do while he is on stage performing tick, tick…BOOM! for us.
tick, tick…BOOM! has some pretty tragic events in it as well as decade-appropriate circumstances. I think the impending feeling of time passing by and the urgency to make something that matters really comes through quite strongly. Aging, being an openly gay man, there’s lots of that fear in this.
Some things I wonder about: what aspects were included in the original musical, what was added from Jonathan’s life that wasn’t in the musical, or what was added for a 2021 audience who are assumed to enjoy pitying other decades. Sometimes looking through a time lens looks like glorifying.
And, sometimes Hollywood films do this thing where they are truthfully showing you something from an autobiographical or otherwise-taken-from-real-life scene, but the script and the acting comes across like the equivalent to a film you’d find in the department store/Blockbuster $1 bins back in the day. I might be being unfair here, but… I guess what I’m trying to say is Garfield is carrying this entire film, which I suppose is something you might want from something this autobiographical.
I did enjoy the scenes of 90s NYC, even just the narrative surrounding what NYC culture is like or what people there expected of it and knew when to call it quits. As someone who, even in 2022 is still dreaming of what NYC could be, or is, it’s sometimes nice to be reminded that thirty years ago people of all stripes and colours were doing the same thing they are now — dreaming of it, wanting to succeed in it, idealizing it.
Overall, I give the film ★★★/5, but Garfield gets an extra star for those beautiful pained expressions of sorrow, joy, regret, and desperate ambition.
