Stream It Or Skip It: ‘tick, tick… BOOM!’ on Netflix, an Off-Broadway Biographical Musical That Showcases Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Directorial Gifts

Another day, another assurance that we’re smack in the middle of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s moment. Netflix’s tick, tick… BOOM! is his directorial debut, an adaptation of the autobiographical off-Broadway musical by Jonathan Larson, who wrote it prior to his most famous work, Rent. Miranda’s film casts Andrew Garfield as Larson, and sticks to the original script — which is a way of saying the story is about Larson’s early struggles as a writer, and doesn’t encompass his death at age 35, just prior to Rent’s debut, so you needn’t gird yourself for a heavy cry. The biggest question heading into every musical is whether it appeals to casual viewers or only those privy to the song-and-dance shtick; let’s find out which lane it’s in.

TICK, TICK… BOOM!: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Jonathan (Garfield) stands on a stage, performing tick, tick… BOOM! as it was originally intended, with him as a frontman backed by a rock band. In 2001, it was re-worked as a legit stage musical with actors and choreography. Miranda encompasses both in this movie, using the former version as a framing device and the latter as a springboard for cinematic drama. The plot: Jonathan is on the cusp of his 30th birthday. He waits tables at an NYC diner. His cruddy, cramped apartment is cluttered with many CDs and tapes and musical instruments next to some recording gear and over there in the corner, a pile of bills with FINAL NOTICE stamped on them in red ink: portrait of a starving artist.

Things are coming to a head for Jonathan: His girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Shipp) is a dancer with a job offer that would take them out of the city. The “dystopian rock musical” that he’s been working on for years, Superbia, is finally getting a foot in the door of the local theatre scene via a script critique and workshop — in front of Stephen Sondheim (Bradley Whitford), even. His actor best friend Michael (Robin de Jesus) grew weary of dispiriting auditions, so he took a well-paying corporate job in — gulp — advertising. (Hey remember when — gulp — advertising was the ultimate big bad guy? How quaint!) Jonathan would make a great jingle writer, since he can write a song about anything, anything except the crucial dramatic turning point of Superbia, which sits there on the cusp of an unveiling with a big hole in it. And many of Jonathan’s friends are HIV-positive and fighting for their lives, or past that stage and just plain gone. Gone.

So much happens in this single week of Jonathan’s life. So so much. He puts in his two weeks at the diner and fights with Susan and visits Michael’s lovely new apartment that was paid for by — gulp — advertising and sits down to write and sits down to write and sits down to write and sits down to write and nothing comes. It’ll come, we know that, or we wouldn’t be watching this movie because the story probably wouldn’t exist. But when it comes, what will it be, and what will it mean? Is this one of those movies about the journey, not the destination? Damn sure looks like it.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Well, the last painfully sincere musical I watched was Dear Evan Hansen, which was similarly intimate, but fatefully, immortally tonally off-key. Suggestion: Pair tick, tick… BOOM! with the adaptation of Miranda’s pre-Hamilton production In the Heights for an enjoyable cross-section of what plaintive Broadwayisms have to offer.

Performance Worth Watching: Garfield’s on-the-cusp-of-manic energy is undeniable, but for my money, the MVP here is Shipp, who’s an easy, naturalistic screen presence, and acts as the movie’s intensely necessary grounding presence.

Memorable Dialogue: “You’re” — the one word Jonathan types and stares at and stares at and stares at while he’s in the midst of his writer’s block

Sex and Skin: Only some soft PG-13 horizontal kissyface.

Our Take: There’s a scene in which Judith Light plays Jonathan’s ancient seen-it-all agent, and she tells him he should be writing what he knows, and what he knew is what we’re watching here. Superbia is nothing now, just an early stepping stone on the way to greater things, like Rent, which we all know was a megahit, no. 11 on the list of the longest-running Broadway shows ever, a musical that one can dislike for its megahit-Broadwayisms at the same time we sympathize with its sincere and unvarnished depiction of NYC artists existing at the heart of the AIDS epidemic. There — I’ve aired my bias against overly earnest, mildly irritating speak-singing and the people who do it, which is what Miranda’s tick, tick… BOOM! is all about. That, and the process of creating a thoughtful work of (overly earnest, mildly irritating) art, more broadly known as The Process, which is an extension of the previously mentioned journey/destination metaphor.

This is a long way of saying the film stays in its lane, and is very much for ears that are acclimated to overly earnest, mildly irritating speak-singing. But it’s also remarkably easy to admire for the buzzing energy of both Garfield’s performance and Miranda’s direction, which keeps the protagonist’s nose out of his own navel via a restless visual dynamic. You don’t need to revere Jonathan Larson to appreciate his struggle, his gamble on his own creative spirit. It helps that Miranda directs the hell out of the musical sequences, standouts being a number set to the hectic rhythm of Sunday-morning diner bustle, and another in which Jonathan swims hard and swims hard to release his writer’s-block frustration but sees the lines at the bottom of the pool become a musical staff, alive and full of notes. The film also takes cheap shots at Cats and spares us a manipulative snot-hanky death scene, two things that are as easy to get behind as Garfield and Miranda’s enthusiasm.

Our Call: STREAM IT. tick, tick… BOOM! often feels like a rah-rah near-hagiographical story about a hero of the Broadway niche. But there’s just enough universal character fodder here to drum up crossover appeal.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

Stream tick, tick... BOOM! on Netflix