Dear Evan Hansen
Universal Pictures | Release Date: September 24, 2021 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
39
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 48 Critic Reviews
Positive:
6
Mixed:
26
Negative:
16
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
Film ThreatAlan NgSep 23, 2021
If you’ve ever felt alone and ignored in life, Dear Evan Hansen may touch you in profound ways. Read full review
76
TheWrapSteve PondSep 14, 2021
It’s messy at times and melodramatic at others, and its treatment of mental health issues is not the most nuanced, but those feel like quibbles given the joy you can find in its best moments. Read full review
75
Original-CinKaren GordonSep 27, 2021
The film version of the multiple Tony Award–winning hit Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen is a mixed bag and a wonky adaptation that doesn’t always quite scan. Yet I’d be lying if I didn’t say that despite its flaws, it’s also strangely affecting. Read full review
75
Washington PostThomas FloydSep 22, 2021
By scaling back the script’s laughs and excising four songs (plus countless reprises), the film at times lands in an uncanny valley between the heightened musical at its core and the weightier young adult drama Chbosky seems to have envisioned. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Johanna SchnellerSep 11, 2021
The songs are clever; the actors dig in (especially Amy Adams and Julianne Moore as Connor and Evan’s moms, respectively). And Ben Platt’s voice is undeniable, a thing of wonder, a pure emotion-delivery system. You will be moved. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesCharles McNultySep 23, 2021
Sorry, haters, the film isn’t a train wreck. This musical, which had its Broadway premiere in 2016, works better in the theater. But the translation to the screen is smoother than expected. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Helen ShawSep 29, 2021
That magnetic, musical pull toward Evan is at work in Chbosky’s movie version. But now the pull is coupled with a powerful push — in other words, repulsion — that keeps us from being seduced. Read full review
60
Time OutAdam FeldmanSep 27, 2021
Platt’s fluid, emotional tenor voice is as beautiful as ever, and it’s easy to understand the desire to preserve his original performance. But the very mannerisms that were well scaled to a 1,000-seat house – the hunched posture, the tics, the blurts of speech – are off-putting in cinematic close-up. Read full review
60
Rolling StoneDavid FearSep 27, 2021
You see Evan Hansen, all of his flaws and desires and self-loathing laid bare. And there are enough of these goosebump-inducing, epiphanic moments courtesy of the actor that you see why people might love this film as well as cringe at it. Platt does not ruin the movie. He singlehandedly gives it a voice. Read full review
60
ABC NewsPeter TraversSep 24, 2021
Flawed? You bet, but the film of the Broadway musical about teen suicide is not the crime against humanity some claim. Yes, Ben Platt, 27 is playing a high school kid, but he inhabits the role he created on stage with every fiber of his being and hits you like a shot in the heart. Read full review
60
EmpireIan FreerSep 10, 2021
Dear Evan Hansen gives enjoyable, tuneful voice to important modern-day concerns but lacks the dramatic and cinematic chops to really take flight. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterMichael RechtshaffenSep 9, 2021
A weakness for the formulaic, combined with a noticeably weighty running time, continually bumps up against the film’s many fine points. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliSep 27, 2021
here’s a dissonance between the film’s darker subjects and its seeming desire to offer something uplifting at the end. The coda feels dishonest and makes it as difficult to root for the film’s success as it does for the main character. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeDon AucoinSep 27, 2021
Director Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Wonder) and screenwriter Steven Levenson work the levers of emotional manipulation so vigorously, and with so little finesse, that it’s hard to get truly invested in either Evan’s pain or his self-created dilemma. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsSep 23, 2021
Mainly, the movie we have here reminds us that what works on a stage, within the non-realistic world and performance momentum of stage musicals, lessens a lot of story problems that movies tend to heighten. Read full review
50
CNNBrian LowrySep 23, 2021
While the film says something that matters, for a show whose press notes proclaim it a "generation-defining Broadway phenomenon," a great deal appears to have been lost in translation. Read full review
50
USA TodayBrian TruittSep 22, 2021
The movie version is simply a poor adaptation, trading the vibrancy and refreshing spirit of the original show for all-too-familiar teen-movie angst, with an out of place leading man. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperSep 22, 2021
The adaptation is a curiously strange effort, as director Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower) films the story like an indie drama, with straightforward, realistic, dialogue-driven scenes — and then every 10 minutes or so, a character breaks into song, and it seems much more contrived and jolting than something like La La Land. Read full review
50
The Associated PressJake CoyleSep 22, 2021
For much of the film, it’s difficult not to imagine the Saturday Night Live sketch that’s probably already being written. More than the age difference, though, Platt’s performance is a constant reminder of Broadway artificiality in a movie striving for something real. Read full review
50
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzSep 21, 2021
Yes, it’s a musical — strictly authenticity isn’t a requirement. Emotional authenticity, on the other hand, is. And that’s what Dear Evan Hansen could use more of. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineDan RubinsSep 20, 2021
The film works harder to fix the problems with its source material than to establish itself as an independent piece of art. Read full review
50
IGNKristy PuchkoSep 16, 2021
Though Chbosky’s staging is uninspired, the songs — both old and new — are nonetheless powerful, which might be enough of a lure for fans of the show or musicals in general. Sadly, Platt’s calamitous casting dooms this adaptation to cringe-worthy awkwardness. Read full review
50
Vanity FairRichard LawsonSep 10, 2021
As was true of the stage production, the Dear Evan Hansen film wants to have it both ways, to see the awful lie at the center of Evan’s message of hope and to still have it play as hopeful. Read full review
50
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 9, 2021
Dever is the best thing about this adaptation, which feels slightly less creepy in the lied-about-knowing-your-brother-to-worm-my-way-into-your-heart department, if only because Dever’s so good at balancing Zoe’s strength and vulnerability that the situation doesn’t read as a nearly 30-year-old creep manipulating a minor. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubCaroline SiedeSep 23, 2021
Relatable in neither its bizarrely specific plotting nor its broadly generic emotions, Dear Evan Hansen is so self-serious that it almost plays like self-parody, only without any “so bad it’s good” fun. We may all be striving for human connection right now, but we’re unlikely to find any here. Read full review
40
The TelegraphTim RobeyNov 4, 2021
On all fronts, you wish that Dear Evan Hansen had nothing to do with Evan Hansen. Read full review
40
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeOct 24, 2021
It’s the cinema equivalent of rubbing cut onions in the eyes of the audience: film-making that is cynically and artificially engineered to make the audience weep. Read full review
40
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyOct 23, 2021
When all roads lead back to Evan, and to Platt’s misstep of a performance, the film becomes one giant gamble that’s quite disastrously failed to pay off. Read full review
40
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeOct 22, 2021
Steven Levenson’s book is all about normalising common mental health issues. But the film also reduces the dead character to a cypher and lets the protagonist off the hook too easily. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawOct 21, 2021
In the end, this film suffocates you with ersatz compassion and personal growth. Read full review
40
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiSep 23, 2021
Dear Evan Hansen might be well-meaning, but it completely misses the mark. It’s not the worst movie out this year, but it’s not a musical one might be inclined to rush to the theater to see, either. Read full review
40
The GuardianAdrian HortonSep 14, 2021
The movie asks the audience to not look at two elephants in the room, and unfortunately, no amount of soaring music can relieve that heavy a burden. Read full review
38
The Seattle TimesKatie WalshSep 23, 2021
The effort put into making this film work is palpable, but the result is something deeply surreal and strange. Perhaps this story simply can’t work as a film, or perhaps it wasn’t a very good musical to begin with. It’s a question that may be debated for years to come. Read full review
38
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 22, 2021
I dare say every review of this adaptation has the words “well-intentioned” in it. “Sweet,” too. So it is. But if that’s the best thing you can say about it, well… Read full review
35
PolygonCharles BramescoSep 24, 2021
On film, this story’s foundation of cynical button-pushing is laid bare. Read full review
30
The AtlanticDavid SimsSep 27, 2021
Almost everything imaginable has gone wrong on the journey from stage to screen, and the result is a film that isn’t even “so bad it’s good,” like some other recent musical movies; mostly, it’s just painful to watch. Read full review
30
TimeStephanie ZacharekSep 27, 2021
This is a movie that repeatedly calls out a dead kid just to make its points. If that’s your idea of entertainment—or even just adequate message-based filmmaking—run, don’t walk, to see Dear Evan Hansen. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternSep 23, 2021
The film suffers from a different condition, an emotional elephantiasis that is inexorable and ultimately terminal. What was by all accounts a modestly scaled production in all of its live-theater iterations has become a ponderous movie that turns earnest into maudlin, lyrical into lugubrious. Read full review
30
SlashfilmJosh SpiegelSep 23, 2021
Dear Evan Hansen, for all the plaudits it received on stage, is a hollow attempt at broad-based sincerity that felt hollow even before it became a big-screen adaptation. Read full review
30
Austin ChronicleMatthew MonagleSep 22, 2021
Dear Evan Hansen is a rare musical that must be seen to be believed. Few shows are less equipped to grapple with their subject matter; watching someone Wikipedia the plot synopsis of the musical in real time remains one of the last true pleasures available to us as a society. Read full review
30
Screen DailyTim GriersonSep 15, 2021
Director Stephen Chbosky badly mishandles the material, resulting in an increasingly frustrating experience in which Evan’s inability to come clean leads to a string of emotional manipulations that sometimes border on cruel. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleSep 22, 2021
Director Stephen Chbosky needed to bring this stage musical into greater balance with the film medium. He needed to make Dear Evan Hansen less grandiose. He needed to pick up the pace and chop 10 minutes from the running time. It’s still possible that wouldn’t have saved it, but it might have made it less awful. Read full review
25
RogerEbert.comRobert DanielsSep 10, 2021
It’s an emotionally manipulative, overlong dirge composed of cloying songs, lackluster vocal performances, and even worse writing. Read full review
25
IndieWireTina HassanniaSep 9, 2021
Unfortunately, Stephen Chbosky’s poor directorial choices cancel out the rousing success Dear Evan Hansen was on stage, with a cascade of glaring distractions that continuously point out the artificiality of the genre. Read full review
23
Paste MagazineJacob OllerSep 27, 2021
I could dig into any number of the movie’s unfortunate choices, bad decisions or downright detestable elements—sprinkling in faint praise like, hey, the Tony-winning Platt might be acting through five layers of bullsh*t, but he can still sing—and I’d still never capture all the reasons Dear Evan Hansen fails. Read full review
20
Little White LiesCorey AtadOct 22, 2021
The depths of failure here are difficult to overstate, beginning with bringing Platt back to the role he originated on stage despite his age. Read full review
16
The PlaylistMarya E. GatesSep 10, 2021
Frankly, the musical, with music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, and book by Steven Levenson, itself is where the fault lies. There were few redeemable qualities to begin with, and Chbosky’s dreary, washed-out direction adds nothing to its already bleak, vapid existence. Read full review
10
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisSep 23, 2021
Treacly and manipulative, Dear Evan Hansen turns villain into victim and grief into an exploitable vulnerability. It made me cringe. Read full review
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