Thursday, March 28, 2024

Despite Criticisms and Release Issues, In The Heights Remains a Massively Entertaining Film

As the dust on the global pandemic slowly settles, movie theaters and cinemas are slowly reopening in certain parts of the world. Particularly in the US and UK, movie theaters have been screening the musical comedy, In The Heights, albeit with a middling box office performance. For those audiences who can’t make it to the cinemas, the film is also available for streaming on HBO Max.

Prior to its release, In The Heights had to overcome several obstacles to see the light of day. The project was initially attached to Harvey Weinstein, a name that’s been thoroughly removed from the Hollywood circuit. Furthermore, with the looming global pandemic, the film’s release date was pushed by a year, adding to the list of many unforeseen circumstances regarding its release.

After a tumultuous series of events, In The Heights finally saw a release on June 4, 2021. The film opened at $11 million and eventually grossed a total of $170 million domestically with a budget of $55 million. Audiences were quick to point out certain issues regarding the film, such as its clear lack of Afro-Latino actors in the film, something that creator Lin-Manuel Miranda later apologized for.

Despite the negative buzz online, many aspects of the film were widely praised by audiences and critics alike. Critics have taken a massive liking to the film, describing it as a hugely entertaining film that brings an under-represented community and musical genre to a mainstream audience, something that Hollywood isn’t usually known for. 

Currently, In The Heights is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a critic score of 96% and an audience score of 95%. The film is also highly rated on Metacritic, with an overall Metascore of 84. The film is an entertaining piece of cinema that musical fans and fans of Miranda’s work will greatly enjoy.

Miranda wrote In The Heights two decades ago, when he was still a student. It was first staged in 2005, and saw him in the leading role. Later on, Lin-Manuel Miranda would go on to create Hamilton, which is his career’s biggest success so far, but his first full-length musical, In the Heights, is what truly kicked off his career.

The film was shot on location in the Washington Heights neighborhood in northern Manhattan. The film is set in the Latino community of Washington Heights. The film follows a large cast of local characters, all of whom share their life stories and dreams for the future via a cacophony of catchy musical numbers, which fuse pulsating Latin rhythms with exhausting dance routines.

For the uninitiated, Washington Heights in the summer is the loudest, most colorful place on Earth, and Miranda has successfully brought the energy and enthusiasm through his writing. 

In The Heights was shot in the summer of 2019, around the same time as Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, which was being filmed just a few streets away. 

In The Heights is directed by Jon M. Chu, who also directed two Step Up movies and the massively successful Crazy Rich Asians. “Directing ‘In The Heights’ was stressful as hell,” said Chu. “But the work really came in finding this cast. We had to find people who could speak all the languages of the movie. Go from dialogue and acting to movement to music, and express it not as a performance, but with truthfulness.”

Anthony Ramos plays lead character Usnavi, the owner of a local bodega that sells a winning lottery ticket early in the film. The rest of the cast is admittedly impressive – alongside Ramos is Melissa Barrera, Corey Hawkins, Leslie Grace, Jimmy Smits and Lin-Manuel Miranda himself, who takes a supporting role. 

Audiences who are looking to be entertained will surely find a lot of it with In The Heights.

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