8.5/10 stinky bananas
Borderline great movie. I do love a new musical and In the Heights did not disappoint.
What I liked:
1. The pace. The pace is real fast and I loved it. 2. The dancing. Holy shit the dancing was phenomenal. Probably the best dancing I’ve ever seen in a movie. 3. The music was good, not great, but definitely nothing to complain about. There was real meaning behind the lyrics and that comes through well in the movie.
There were three glaring things that really knocked the score down for me. 1. I didn’t care about the grandma dying. Maybe that makes me a terrible person, but guess what? Still don’t care. Fuck that lady. Also, it was definitely her time to go, the old lady didn’t even check her lottery ticket. What an idiot. Buys the ticket, shoves it in a box, and forgets about it. Good riddance. So that 30 minutes of the movie that was all about her dying sucked for me. Too bad, so sad. 2. The ’hot girl’ character wasn‘t my cup of tea. I’ll leave it at that. 3. Product placement. Holy shit. How much money did Tide pay to get their pens in this movie. There were two uses of the product plus a close up. Product placement doesn’t usually bother me but it was so clear and obvious in the movie that it became annoying. The movie title should’ve been In the Heights feat. Tide Pens brought to you by Beats by Dr. Dre.
If you like a good song and dance, give this a try.