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over 3 years ago

Hamilton

a review by sykobanana

A Disappointment

This is a musical not made for people outside of the USA. I had to watch the thing again and wiki Hamilton to try to figure out who was who except for some of the bigger names.

Going by the poster, this is was meant to be some attempted rise to fame of Harry Potter in Hollywood.
The casting was varied, which is great generally, but not representative of history (noone looked like what they should have).
Historical themes seemed to be swapped around and added in for convenience-sake.
Some performances were good, Soo, Groff and Diggs, whilst others (MIranda - who was better in Mary Poppins Returns) just felt flat and tired.
It felt like 6 or so cameras were placed and then just recorded.
And the choreography was distracting at times, not complimentary.
And character development - the only one who shows any is Soo's character.

This might be a great musical, but it is not a great movie (despite what people are reviewing it as). It is hard to follow as a citizen of the world who does not know US political history details nor its players. Its cinematography, casting and set pieces felt lazy (this could have been turned into grand cinema). And it was overly long...people might expect this type of thing to go for hours on West End to get their money's worth, but 2hrs 40 is overkill in this medium.

The hype behind this made me think this was brilliant. I was majorly disappointed.