Review: Andrew Garfield pays splendid tribute to a ‘Rent’ legend in ‘Tick, Tick … Boom!’
“Tick, Tick … Boom!,” a 2021 movie based on a 2001 stage musical retooled from a 1990 one-man show, tells a simple story with a complicated genealogy. The one-man show told the story of a musical that was ultimately never produced, written by a guy whose next musical became a Broadway phenomenon. And now it’s a Netflix movie, directed by the creative force behind a completely different Broadway phenomenon. Got all that? No worries if not. The movie, blessedly and sometimes blissfully, is easier to watch than it is to put into words.
And that’s only fitting, since “Tick, Tick … Boom!” itself concerns an epic case of writer’s block. Those jittery tick-tick noises punctuating the soundtrack are the sounds of a playwright racing the clock; they’re also a reminder that every life has its own undisclosed deadline. We’re in
