In The Heights, A Critically Acclaimed Musical That Failed To Convince Audiences To Watch It. Failure?
In The Heights was released in the UK this last Friday 18th of June. The movie, directed by Jon M. Chu is based on the stage musical with the same name created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, which got international praise and numerous awards for another well-known musical, Hamilton.
The movie follows Usnavi de la Vega, while he is telling some children his story in Washington Heights. Usnavi has the dream to repoen his father's bar in the Dominican Republic, but what the movie really follows is an ensemble of friends, family and lovers living in the New York neighbourhood of mostly latin american that seem to have lived better days and that is slowly getting lost due to gentrificiation and rise in prices.
The characters are all mostly immigrants, first-generation Americans or in-between generation that immigrated when they were young.
The movie, despite it feels fresh and uplifitin due to the happy songs, latin sounds and exciting rhythm; is not afraid to deal with more serious topics such as deportation, feeling of belonging and what we call home.
Probably this combination and the diverse cast is what explains why the movie was already praised even before its release in U.S.A on the 10th of June. The movie is, after all, directed by the same director of the successfully and also critically acclaimed Crazy Rich Asians (2018) that according to Deadline Hollywood it did a net profit of $120.8 million. Only on it's first week did more than $26 million, 5 more of the estimation.
Like In The Heights, Crazy Rich Asians was praised by the reviews. In Rotten Tomatoes their approval had rating of 91% based on 362 reviews and 76% approval rate in the audience score. 6.9 out 10 on IMDB or 74 on Metacritic based on 50 critic reviews. In fact, In The Heights is far more praised. Not only has an approval rate of 96% over 279 critical reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. It has also a 95% approval rate in the audience score. 7,7 on IMDB and a stunning 84 in Metacritic and the mark "Metacritic Must See Movie".
It is not an easy achievable mark. For comparison, on Rotten Tomatoes, the winner of the Oscar this year, Nomadland, had a 94% from critics and 82% from the audience. Parasite, the winner of the Oscar on 2020, had 98% and 90%, respectively.
The movie was already praised even before its release in U.S.A. on the 10th of June. got praised by the critics, getting a 96%