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In the Heights Movie Review

In the Heights is a 2021 musical film directed by Jon M. Chu and starring Anthony Ramos in the main role. It is a very disappointing movie.

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“Ignore anyone who doubts you“

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Usnavi, a sympathetic New York bodega owner, saves every penny every day as he imagines and sings about a better life. He is the main character, but the movie also follows others in this community, thus it attempted to be an epic take on the immigrant experience of the Latino community with the focus mostly resting on the Dominicans as Washington Heights after all has the biggest population of Dominicans in the US.

Having a film about the immigrant experience is important and definitely a great idea, but the execution isn’t great. My main issue here was its shallow handling of the themes of immigration, family, tradition and modernism, clashes between two different cultures etc. The movie deals with these themes, but very superficially, which was quite disappointing to me. When you have a film about such an important subject, you need to imbue it with some meaning and depth. None of that was present here.

What is there is a lot of emotionally driven storytelling. A couple of scenes were genuinely affecting with the death of the family’s matriarch being particularly moving. However, the lack of stronger characterization hindered the movie’s overall relatability and emotional drive. The characters are fine, but as is the case with the majority of this movie, more could have been done with them.

Usnavi is your typical wide-eyed, dreamy protagonist. Anthony Ramos is actually quite good in the role, but I personally did not care all that much for him at the end of the day. Abuela Claudia is a wonderful character and her song is among the best and most poignant of the bunch. Leslie Grace is another standout as Nina Rosario and I found her scenes among the most moving and best realized. As for Vanessa and Benny, their relationship wasn’t as interesting, and it received too much focus.

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In the Heights is also not all that memorable as a musical. I personally preferred Lin-Manuel Miranda’s ‘Hamilton’ more than this solid, but far from memorable musical. The problem here is that at least to me half of the songs were annoying as I absolutely despise hip-hop, so all of those songs were frustrating to me. Basically, this movie was at its best when the female characters sang while it was at its worst during the men’s singing. I prefer the former breezy pop tunes over the annoying rapping.

The titular opening song started off with off-putting rapping, but it ended really strongly. It’s an epic opening with an especially memorable chorus. Breathe is one of the better numbers as it’s melodically while Paciencia y Fe is the movie’s most heartfelt musical number that was accompanied by the striking metro underground sequence that played with the lighting very effectively. I also liked When the Sun Goes Down for the magical realism imagery that was all too lacking in this feature.

In the Heights is well filmed, but again it needed more of those theatrical, over-the-top enchanting sequences, though the lighting was excellent and the film’s pleasingly colorful. The deep dialogue is lacking. Some of the sets and imagery are striking, but the direction from Chu was expectedly weak as he is not a good director.

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