In The Heights (Jon M. Chu, 2021)

As befits a Broadway property, the film adaptation of In The Heights has some second-act problems; namely, your ass starts to itch. But I loved this corn's-a-poppin' musical for the simple fact that it feels firmly in the classic age of the Hollywood musical even though we're supposed to be (forever stuck?) in  the baroque age according to Henri Focillon's model for the life cycle [editor, please retain the singular] of cultural forms. Sure, In The Heights refines the genre by featuring a mostly Latino cast led by future ex-husband Anthony Ramos with excellent turns by Daphne Rubin-Vega and, in one disquieting scene, an unrecognizable Marc Anthony. Of course, there are some mannerist moments referencing Busby Berkeley and Royal Wedding. But overall, its simple-as-muck story and shameless outbursts of song display the formal transparency, to use Thomas Schatz's words, characteristic of the classic age. 

So I could praise the refreshingly haphazard choreography or the warm evocation of the sounds and atmosphere of my beloved city or my favorite number, the lottery fantasy "96,000," which may be the first ever to explicitly outline both parts of Richard Dyer's dictum that musicals tell us what utopia feels like but not how to organize it. But the genre dork in me loves In The Heights most for making hay of the notion that genres develop in an easy, linear fashion.

And hey, if you didn't like it, no sweat. Watch the incredible films of Antoinette Zwirchmayr instead.

Grade: a hedged A-minus

And can I just: