Tick, Tick... Boom! Review

Jonathan Larson wrote tick, tick... BOOM! as a rock monologue about turning 30 without a hit, a few years before Rent, and died suddenly in 1996, just before Rent opened. Lin-Manuel Miranda, who played Larson on stage in 2014, makes his directing debut with Steven Levenson's adaptation, which Netflix acquired in 2019; the shoot began in March 2020, stopped after eight days for the pandemic and finished that autumn.

Andrew Garfield, who took singing and piano lessons for the part, plays Larson as a charming, exhausting man who treats every friend as an audience, and his "Why", sung live in Central Park, is the film's high point. Robin de Jesús is terrific as Michael, the friend who traded acting for advertising, and the diner number "Sunday", staged with a counter full of Broadway legends, is a lovely in-joke for theater people.

Miranda's direction is generous and busy, cutting between Larson performing the show in 1992 and the life it describes, and the documentary-style bookends were criticized even by admirers. Alexandra Shipp does what she can with Susan, who is written mostly as a deadline Larson keeps missing. Garfield won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination, and the editing was nominated too.