IN THE HEIGHTS ***
IDEA: In Manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood, a range of characters negotiate cultural heritage, love, belonging, and dreams of personal and social progress.
BLURB: There’s something to be said of a movie that manages to sustain a level of raucous energy for nearly two-and-a-half hours. Rather than exhaust or oppress, this milieu of buzzing commotion is part and parcel of the infectious celebratory spirit of In the Heights, which bursts with an exuberant love of Latin culture, diasporic identity, and the immigrant communities that comprise the bedrock of America. Chu’s adaptation of the Broadway musical shoots out of the gate from its opening number, a musique-concrète city symphony turned dancing-in-the-streets extravaganza, and from then on, pinwheels and ignites in an ingratiating riot of motion and sound. It might be easy to take issue with the fairly frictionless, anodyne nature of this party atmosphere if In the Heights wasn’t clearly designed to offer a vision of an urban immigrant utopia, an expression of ancestral cultural fecundity in which geographic distances are bridged and dreams are self-actualized. The story does not ignore sociopolitical struggle - gentrification, assimilation, and racism are all touched upon - but these are not the point, nor are they permitted to dampen the peppy mood for long. Sometimes, In the Heights is perhaps overly hectic, with Myron Kerstein’s breakneck editing too often splintering and obscuring the choreography in spatially chaotic flurries. It’s a testament to the film's winning performances, musical panache, and enormous heart that, by the end, such craft quibbles largely fade under the summery effulgence, as warm as the island sun in Manhattan.
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