‘Dear Evan Hansen’ to Open Toronto Film Festival

Toronto Review: Opening-Night Film ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ (SPOILERS)
https://deadline.com/2021/09/dear-evan-hansen-movie-review-ben-platt-stephen-chbosky-universal-1234830005/

So how does the film, which opened the Toronto Film Festival on Thursday night, stack up against the stage adaptation? Well, it stands somewhere in between Rob Marshall’s Chicago (a very good film adaptation of a Broadway play), and Rob Marshall’s Into the Woods (a very bad film adaptation of a Broadway play). Dear Evan Hansen works well enough to be enjoyable, and ends right before it begins to wear out its welcome.
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https://nowtoronto.com/movies/reviews/tiff-review-dear-evan-hansen (not spoiled)

Which is strange, because the show largely takes place at a high school, the setting of many a musical. But let’s face it, neither the kids from Glee nor Danny and Sandy had to deal with suicide, depression and social anxiety.

These are all things that obsess the title character of Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s musical. Evan (Ben Platt) is a socially anxious teen trying to get by at the beginning of yet another school year. When a letter he’s written to himself as a therapy exercise gets put in the wrong hands, and tragedy ensues, he goes along with a narrative that brings him popularity, love and the kind of stable family life he’s never known, even though it’s all based on a lie.