tick, tick...BOOM! (2021) * * *

Directed by:  Lin Manuel Miranda

Starring:  Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp, Robin de Jesus, Joel Grey, Richard Kind, Bradley Whitford

As tick, tick, BOOM! begins as a raucous musical number, Jonathan Larson (Garfield) is a week or so from turning thirty and laments having done nothing of substance with his life.   Rent, Larson's most famous work, is still ahead of him and will always remain so since he died the night before the iconic play's premiere.   tick, tick, BOOM! isn't about Rent, but how Larson struggled to finish a work he had been struggling with for eight years.   As the days before his play debuts in front of a workshop to be attended by Broadway producers, Larson suffers from writer's block as he attempts to write a song to be sung by his female lead which would tie the play's acts together.  His girlfriend Susan (Garfield) has accepted a job outside of Manhattan and wants him to move with her there.   His best friend Michael (de Jesus) has begun a lucrative advertising career and longs for Jonathan to join him and not live in squalor in a tiny Manhattan apartment.

Jonathan's real job to (barely) pay the bills is at a local diner which is hopping on Sunday mornings and frequented by some of Broadway's biggest producers and directors.   tick, tick...BOOM! was the name of Larson's one-man show which came about following his successful workshop.  The play he labored over for eight years never saw the light of day, but it served as a stepping stone for the indefatigable Jonathan, played by Andrew Garfield with a perpetual grin and boundless energy.   It's impossible not to get behind Jonathan and wish the best for him, even though we know the facts of his eventual death loom large.

The musical numbers are energetic, if not very memorable.   I can't recall a note of any of them and many of those may seem extraneous, but what would you expect from a movie directed by Hamilton's Lin Manuel Miranda about a Broadway show writer and director?   Music or not, the underlying story of Jonathan Larson's life is what's compelling here.   Jonathan Larson longed to hear the applause and the critical raves over his work, but as we know, he never lived to hear any of it.   tick, tick...BOOM! is as much a title as foreshadowing.