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.
