‘Blue Moon’ Review: A Shimmering Script About Ol’ Broadway Struggles to Accommodate the Wrong Star
variety.comPeter Debruge Chief Film Critic Witticist-lyricist Lorenz Hart would cringe at the pun, but “Blue Moon” is nothing if not a funny valentine to the tortured (closeted, Jewish, alcoholic, diminutive) songwriter who died in 1943 at age 48, having drunk too much on opening night of his final collaboration with composer Richard Rodgers.
Set six months earlier, Richard Linklater’s splendid portrait stars a courageous but egregiously miscast Ethan Hawke, chewing the scenery from a one-foot trench in the floor.
Like a backstage pass for Broadway buffs, it’s one hell of a show for those in the know, and a sparkling introduction for the uninitiated.
This was not a happy period in Hart’s life, and though he comes off charming and clever —the showman-cum-show queen — what makes him such a deserving subject are the layers of insecurity and self-loathing for which his patter is so clearly overcompensating. “He was the saddest man I ever knew,” the singer Mabel Merced once said, a quotation that sets the stage for an ever-so-theatrical hour and a half.
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