Coming out at the end of September which is also suicide awarness month, “Dear Evan Hansen” tries to bring attention to anxiety, depression and suicide, but is overshadowed by a train wreck of a plot.

Evan Hansen (Ben Platt) is a senior in high school with severe anxiety and depression who has to write letters to himself as an assignment for his Therapist. When Connor Murphy (Colton Ryan) takes the letter and later takes his own life, his parents will go to Evan for answers but with none to give Evan finds himself in a lie that spirals out of control.

“Dear Evan Hansen ” has some issues in the Broadway production and the film emphasized the wrong parts of the musical in the adaptation.

The plot of this movie is hard to watch, not because of the hard topics, but because of the horrible writing. The movie excuses all of Evan’s lies and wrongdoings claiming his anxiety made him do it. While his anxiety does play a part in this, Evan does not try to undo his lies until he is caught.

The writing is not completely awful however as the movie gives representation to those who suffer from depression but hide it from the world, building a wall around their emotions. One of the new songs in the movie called “The Anonymous Ones,” written by Benji Pasek and Justin Paul, is a powerful song that gives a spotlight to those who suffer with mental health issues and have to stay silent about it.

The choreography of this film is atrocious. This is a main struggle throughout the entire movie and many times the dancing is two dimensional as if it belongs on a stage. Other times the choreography is so bad that the audience will cringe in their seats.

Platt seems to struggle to get his footing as a movie adaptation of his Broadway character. At times Platt acts as if he is still on the big stage instead of the big screen which is a completely different ballpark. Despite this, Platt does an excellent job at showing the struggle his character is going through.

The true star of this movie is not Platt but his character’s love interest, Zoe Murphy (Kaitlyn Dever). Dever was the biggest surprise of the movie with how her character dealt with the death of her brother who she had a strained relationship with. Dever brings Zoe to life in a way that no other character does and truly understands her internal struggles. Dever’s version of “Requiem” is very powerful. Amy Adams as Cynthia Murphy is the other star of this movie. Her character shows the true pain behind a grieving mother who is searching for answers which helps the audience stay grounded in this movie musical.

The cinematography is painful to watch as the editing is all over the place and at times seems as if this movie was edited in Windows Movie Maker with some of the cuts and transitions.

This film talks about very important topics but by the end, it leaves the audience without any resources or methods to get help other than a few songs.

This movie could have been fantastic but falls short in almost every way. I loved seeing the musical on Broadway, but even going into the theatre with no expectations, I was disappointed at almost every corner. The topic of mental health needs to be talked about more in society, but this film does not get to the core of mental health as it should. Overall, I rate this movie a 2.5 out of 5 Film Reels.