Generally, I’m not the world’s biggest musical fan. I’ll admit it: I often think them overlong, shallow in terms of character development and depth, and find the musical theater standards tend to be mainly forgettable, with a few catchy showstoppers mixed in for good measure. In The Heights, the best straight Broadway stage adaptation in quite some time, falls pray to these shortcomings while managing to remain a highly-engaging, uber-flashy toe-tapper that celebrates the cultural diversity of one of New York City’s last gentrification holdouts. As far as stage-to-screen musicals go, there’s not all that much to complain about.

Usnavi (Anthony Ramos), like so many of his compatriots in the Washington Heights neighborhood, is the son of immigrants, his unconventional name the result of his father misreading a word on an American naval boat. Usnavi dreams of returning home to the Dominican Republic, regaling friends and customers at the bodega that he owns and spends the majority of his time with stories of the “best years of his life” on those island beaches. As a legendary NYC heatwave closes in on the neighborhood, the city’s patrons each hold onto their sueñitos, or “little dreams”. In the Heights, working from a very direct translation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s 2008 Tony Award-winning smash hit, hones in on the self-discovery of its characters and their goals as they try to find where they fit amongst a world that too often sidelines, marginalizes, and displaces them.
There’s Nina (Leslie Grace), the whip-smart student who left Washington Heights for the greener pastures of Stanford University, only to find herself feeling out of place and without direction; her old flame Benny (Corey Hawkins), loyal employee at Nina’s father Kevin’s (Jimmy Smit) establishment cabbie stand; Usnavi’s nephew Sonny (Gregory Diaz IV), a sarcastic dreamer who struggles with his status as an undocumented citizen; and Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), an aspiring fashion designer and apple of Usnavi’s eye, who’s working at the salon to make ends meet.

Every nook and cranny of director Jon M Chu’s (Crazy Rich Asians) adaptation is filled with color and music, his eye for spectacle translating to a lively and detail-rich affair that truly pops off the screen. From the impressively-staged dance numbers to an envious spread of infectious performances, his take on In the Heights milks the stage extravaganza for all its worth, not losing one ounce of the Broadway production’s larger-than-life allure in the making. Chu has a flair for glitz that fits so well with the material, elevating the sweaty corners of Washington Heights into streets paved with nostalgic gold, drawing out what makes this place “home”, especially so for all the characters trying to escape to somewhere else.

As a fairly straightforward adaptation, Chu’s cut of In The Heights most likely won’t win over anyone who’s not already a fan of Miranda’s distinct hip-hop-lite lyrical styles and the film suffers the same middle sag that the stage version does. While the world finally had a chance to watch a filmed-version of ‘Hamilton’’s Broadway run over at Disney+, In The Heights is a night and day experience; a perfect opportunity for those who’ve never seen Miranda’s debut musical come to life in big-budget Hollywood musical fashion. The film remains very music-heavy, with much of the exposition and plot spat out in verse, but Chu finds a myriad of ways to make these songs more visually-intriguing than characters singing at the camera or at one another.

The performances all around are magnetic with Ramos delivering a career-changing leading turn as Usnavi. His easy charm and personable spark energizes the character at the heart of all the heat and Ramos is more than up to the task of winning over audience’s affections. 16-year old Diaz IV (Vampires vs. the Bronx) remains the film’s other left-field discovery, the young performer often stealing scenes right out from under seasoned talent twice his age.

This talent extends below the line as well, with the technical elements of In the Heights shining just as brightly; dazzling with Mitchell Travers’ lived-in costumes, Alice Brooks’ splashy cinematography, and Andrew Baseman’s alive and august sets. Everything works in harmony under Chu’s astute direction to create an electrifying celebration of the melting pot that is America, this energetic and ceiling-smashing toe-tapper a testament to the dreamers of all colors just trying to find their foothold in a country they want to call their own.

CONCLUSION: Jon M. Chu’s tantalizing and splashy adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s seminal smash ‘In The Heights’ is a disruptive and colorful explosion of heart and lyricism. It may not win over any new musical theater converts but as far as stage-to-screen translations go, there’s no sweating what everyone here has accomplished.