tick, tick… BOOM!

The new Netflix film tick, tick…BOOM! begins with what I assumed was old video camera archive footage of Jonathan Larson - the story's main character. I wondered when they were going to segue out of that and into the movie. It turned out, all of that WAS the movie. I'm not sure about other awards for this film, but Andrew Garfield NEEDS to receive a Best Actor Oscar nomination for this. What he does is nothing short of incredible. He is accessible, vulnerable, lovable, and thoroughly convincingly brings Jonathan Larson to life.

Before he hit lightning in a bottle with Rent (and sadly passed away before its opening night on Broadway), Larson wrote tick, tick…BOOM! - an autobiographical musical about being a struggling up-and-coming wanna-be artist (while doubling as a waiter in a diner), and the impending peril of turning 30 in the year 1990. I bought the cast recording of TTB back in 2002. The opening number, "30/90," is a magnificent song. I like it better than some of the songs in Rent. It's tremendous, exciting, a fun singalong, and I could rarely get past it to listen to the rest, because I kept setting the CD on repeat. The remaining numbers can't help but pale in comparison, but some have their moments, while most of the others are forgettable early-90s rock opera filler that sound like they were written by a guy still trying to find his voice.

My other favorite song, “Boho Days,” is tacked on to the cast recording as a bonus track, sung in acapella demo style by Larson. It didn’t make it into the final version of the off-Broadway musical, but - delightfully - they found a place for it in this movie. The two other highlights in an otherwise nondescript score are “Therapy” [which makes me think of “Fast” from Zanna, Don’t and “We’re Okay” from Larson’s own Rent] and “No More,” which shares a title with a song from Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. Sondheim, who passed away on Thanksgiving weekend, was obviously a muse for Jonathan Larson. He borrows another Sondheim title here with “Sunday” - a tip of the hat to Sunday in the Park With George. It is a well-filmed number chock-full of cameos from numerous Broadway legends. I’ve heard friends say that when watching tick, tick…BOOM! on Netflix, they paused the film and took an intermission after this number.

I was never a gigantic fan of Sondheim, but could always appreciate and respect his talent and what a giant he was in the world of musical theatre. In the movie, we get to hear his voice on an answering machine message, and - for the “in-person” scenes - enjoy Bradley Whitford’s performance that was convincing enough to make me think it was the real Sondheim until a friend corrected me.

It is fitting that this movie is directed by another musical theatre national treasure: Lin-Manuel Miranda. He knows how to pace a show, and knows his way around a camera. tick, tick…BOOM! is an interesting look at early budding genius right before it went on to make it big. I bet Jonathan Larson and Stephen Sondheim are collaborating on one hell of a new project right now.