“When I win $96,000 I’m gonna move to the Dominican Republic and buy a bar!” Dude, you’re almost thirty. Go to college.
We should start by saying this movie was lovely and invigorating and it’s so cool to see a movie with a diverse cast singing about New York again but not in Colonial garb. My first experience with ITH was about four years ago when I became a weightlifting coach on accident and one of the guys at the gym was uncharacteristically musically inclined and ITH was what he would put on whenever he was in charge of the stereo, which was maybe weekly. Seeing it finally, finally come to fruition with Friend and Friend’s niece and Wife was the payoff of many years of anticipation. I’m so pleased to have a new musical to add to my palette (even if that show’s central tenet is essentially the awful takeaways from The Wizard of Oz).
No knocks on a musical about The Wizard of Oz, by the way, as you know from my love of Wild Rose.
But if one were going to knock a movie that repeated the mistakes of one of the most repressed, anti-progressive, “if you can’t find something in your backyard, it was never really yours in the first place”–sorry dopamine–racial justice what–stop complaining about your lack of social safety net–it would probably have to do with the fact that your previous dream is insufficiently suited to you or that you fundamentally misunderstand your place in the world, like Dorothy misunderstands her place on the Kansas farm. Her longing for adventure and travel is disproven by the nightmare of Oz, despite the fact that it’s a dream (I think if we’re being fair to Baum, that this is only the Hollywood version).
Usnavi’s dream of leaving Washington Heights, under the condition that he can bring his abuella and Sonny, seems transgressive and radical. It is a statement of rejection of the failures of the United States to fulfill its fundamental obligation to extend liberty and opportunity to its citizens. And the fact that we can see he’s succeeded in his mission by his presence in the very first scene on the beaches of the Dominican Republic affirms this radical reality. Spoilers ahead.
Which is why it’s so strange that the two red herrings in the narrative are basically him giving false information to his child audience about the provenance of the lottery ticket, which leads us to believe that it’s never claimed. This would’ve been a pretty radical plot had it been followed through, because the original point of the musical number is that “everyone has their own sueñito,” not that “everyone has their own sueñito, but sometimes the only way you can afford to do what you do is if you win an unwinnable lottery and your grandmother dies before she can spend the money.” Let’s leave that aside for the other cheap shot , which is probably less of a lie when it’s on stage and the audience is forced to imagine a beach rather than see it in technicolor.
Wife says, “the message that dreams can change is not a bad one,” so I’ll include that asterisk , but let’s examine those dreams for a moment. Why is it that the two options for the one girl who actually decides to go to college is Stanford or drop out? Why does she have to choose between depriving her family of their entire life savings or stop going to school altogether? What about attending state school or public university in New York? Benny even mentions that she got into a bunch of schools in New York. What’s the issue? Why isn’t every young person’s dream in the lottery song to go to public university, by the way? Benny has a cool plan of going to business school. But Usnavi’s big plan is that he’s going to buy his dead dad’s bar and move to the DR? Why isn’t anyone telling him this is a bad plan that didn’t even work out for his dad? Why is no one self-reflective about the fact that it’s fallen into major disrepair, despite being the crowning achievement of his father’s life? His lawyer/real estate broker in Washington Heights very happily takes a huge check to do Usnavi’s business, but he doesn’t seem like he’s done a great job of outlining the pros and cons of international business real estate for Usnavi early in this movie.
Before we get too far away from the college issue, it is so difficult for me to drum up any sympathy for Nina, the valedictorian, going to an Ivy League school and her family having to sell the business to pay for it. How spoiled is this kid? I remember when I was in school during the 2008 financial crisis, hearing one of the people in my dorm talk about how their family had to take a second mortgage out on their horse farm to pay tuition, and thinking is this how wealthy people trick themselves into thinking they’re middle class? Your daddy was acquired by a hipster dry laundromat and now you need to leave school? You know that when you sell your workplace to another company, you don’t also fire all of the employees and liquidate your assets, right? The same literal scenario happens to the nail parlor IN THE MOVIE. How are you confused about how this transaction works?
The chemistry between Benny, Usnavi, and Sonny is electric, especially in some of the early scenes, when Usnavi is building up the courage (and failing) to ask out Vanessa. The younger actresses who play Nina and Vanessa are given tough work with the script. They don’t really have connection to one another. They’re not even friends, really. They’re more so tangentially related through their romantic orbits with Benny and Usnavi.
Ultimately, really pleased with this movie. Would see again just to rewatch the pool number.
