tick, tick... BOOM! Review (Film, 2021)
content warning: foul language, hospital footage
tick, tick… BOOM! is Jonathan Larson’s semi-autobiographical musical about his own life. It is the story of a young composer trying to find his voice in NYC. Specifically, it’s the story of his life as he tries to make his passion project, an original dystopian rock musical, happen. The original version was a monologue performed by Jonathan Larson, then adapted after his death into a three person musical.
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s tick, tick… BOOM! is a new version of the original monologue. The story is told in a mix of home movies, onstage performance footage, and slice of life scenes in the real world. The cast of three is now played by dozens, each playing the various characters represented in the monologue and the audiences taking a risk on new works.
Take this with the praise it’s meant to be. The film version of tick, tick… BOOM! is everything the film version of Rent should have been. It’s small, it’s constantly moving, and it’s filled with energy and joy. It simultaneously doesn’t feel the need to expand to grand cinematic moments just to have them and feels free to play with the storytelling, structure, and arrangements of the text and music.
The Rent comparisons are built into the text. You’ll hear it in the lyrics of the songs. The songs feature lines about dropping keys from the window and bills being overdue. Rent is a show pulled from the same lived experiences Larson wrote tick, tick… BOOM! from. The difference is an additional buffer of fiction in the storytelling.
Andrew Garfield is incredible as Larson. He sounds great on the songs, matching style with Broadway stars like Robin de Jesús and Joshua Henry. Garfield has an easy presence onscreen, balancing out the energy of his castmates whether in two person scenes or crowded house parties and performances. The structure of tick, tick… BOOM! relies on making a genuine connection with Jonathan so you care when the plot shifts to much more serious subject matter.
Larson was a composer in NYC coming into adulthood at the height of the AIDS epidemic. It’s literal text in Rent and tick, tick… BOOM! because it was impossible to escape. If you were writing reality-based stories set around the arts in NYC, you either discussed the reality of the situation or you contributed to the campaign of silence that took so many lives. Larson chose to reflect the reality he saw and Steven Levenson’s screenplay and Miranda’s direction don’t shy away from it, either.
The big connecting theme of tick, tick… BOOM! is time. The “tick” of the title is a clock and acknowledged right at the start. Everything in Jonathan’s life is on a deadline and all of his friend are moving on as their own deadlines with him have passed. His roommate has to move out, his girlfriend has to make a decision on a new job, and no one knows who will run out of time in their dreams, their careers, or their lives with everything happening. Day turns to night and the bills keep showing up every month. Time is the enemy and the inspiration behind everything. It is the core of the tension and the structure of the narrative.
tick, tick… BOOM! is a slice of life musical about an artist. The struggles of a composer in the early 90s in NYC are quite specific. However, the greater themes at play are universal. The rock score and story still feel fresh 30 years later, finding the balance between loyalty to the source material and shifting to fit the form of a film musical.
tick, tick… BOOM! is streaming on Netflix.
