Movies like tick, tick... BOOM! (2021)

tick, tick... BOOM! (2021)

United StatesPG_13115Min

7.5 ( 121K Votes )87 %

On the brink of turning 30, a promising theater composer navigates love, friendship, and the pressure to create something great before time runs out. In 1992, Jonathan Larson performs his rock monologue Tick, Tick... Boom! in front of an audience at New York Theatre Workshop, accompanied by friends Roger and Karessa Johnson. He describes an incessant ticking noise he hears in his head, and begins telling about the week leading up to his 30th birthday and his desire to become a successful musical theater composer. Jonathan juggles work at the Moondance Diner in SoHo with preparing for a workshop at Playwrights Horizons of his musical Superbia. He has a party at home with friends, including his former roommate Michael, who left acting for advertising, his girlfriend Susan, a dancer-turned-teacher, and fellow waiters Freddy and Carolyn. While alone later, Susan tells Jonathan about a teaching job at Jacob's Pillow and asks him to come too. Jonathan visits Michael at his new Upper East Side apartment, celebrating his financial success and higher quality of life from their old apartment. Ira Weitzman, the Musical Theatre Program Director at Playwrights Horizons, asks Jonathan to write a new song for Superbia, as the story needs it. This troubles him, as his idol, Stephen Sondheim, told him the same at the ASCAP Workshop some years ago, but he can't come up with anything and he only has a week. Jonathan tries to get his agent, Rosa Stevens, to invite Sondheim to the workshop, but eventually just cold-calls Sondheim and others. He watches PBS's Sunday in the Park with George with Michael and Susan, and afterwards Michael asks him to join an advertising focus group to earn extra money. Susan also pressures him again to move with her, although he feels his career is just starting in New York. The next day he imagines the Diner full with Broadway stars. Carolyn tells him Freddy, who is HIV-positive, has been hospitalized, adding to Jonathan's anxieties as many of his friends have already died in the HIV/AIDS epidemic. He walks down Broadway to Playwrights Horizons for the start of rehearsals for Superbia. Susan, frustrated by Jonathan's indecisiveness, breaks up with him. To get money to hire a full band for the workshop, Jonathan attends the advertising focus group. Making a good first impression, he considers a corporate future, but realizes he would hate it and deliberately sabotages it. Michael criticizes him for being in a financially unstable theater career, while Jonathan claims with his impending 30th birthday that he is getting too old to be successful. After finally getting an encouraging call from Rosa about his industry invites, he plans to write the new song the night before the workshop, but his power gets cut off before starting. Heading to a swimming pool to cool off, he pictures sheet music lines on the pool floor and finally comes up with the new song, which he writes out by hand. At the workshop are friends, family, and industry professionals, including Sondheim. Karessa brings down the house with the new song, 'Come to Your Senses,' and Jonathan imagines Susan singing it. He receives praise but no offers to produce Superbia. Rosa tells him he must keep writing, hoping that something will succeed, but he will likely face more rejection. Discouraged, Jonathan runs to Michael begging for a corporate job and perceived stability, but Michael changes his mind after seeing the workshop, encouraging Jonathan to continue in musical theater. When Jonathan accuses him of not understanding what it's like to be running out of time, Michael reveals he is HIV-positive. Finally grasping his career obsession has cost him his relationship with Susan and jeopardized his friendship with Michael, Jonathan wanders through New York before finding himself at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Hopping a fence to a piano, he reflects on his friendship with Michael and the sacrifices he must make, affirming he will continue his musical theater career. He and Michael reconcile. On the morning of Jonathan's 30th birthday Sondheim calls, congratulating him on the workshop and wanting to talk more about Superbia, lifting his spirits. Holding his birthday party at the Moondance Diner, attended by his friends, he is relieved to hear Freddy is to be discharged from the hospital. Susan gifts him blank sheet music paper to help in his career, promising to see 'the next one.' She narrates that the 'next one' was Tick, Tick... Boom!, before he returned to working on a previous project, which became Rent. She reveals he died of an undiagnosed aortic aneurysm the night before Rent's premiere Off-Broadway. He never experienced the success he desired, but his work lives on. In 1992, Jonathan performs the final song from Tick, Tick... Boom!, watching his friends and family in the audience, including Susan in the back.

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