In the Hype

After much inaugural hoohah at New York's Tribeca Film Festival, "In the Heights", a musical about Gotham Latinos,ellicited a monumental yawn in the provinces. Opening day revenues were flat in the rest of the US. New York critics and media were stunned, the way most elites are stunned by any serious questioning of their criteria. What happened? Everyone can see that the photography unfolds as gorgeous, love-letter views of Manhattan, the score is rousing, rollicking salsa, the voices are thrilling, soaring, melodic, the dancing kicks butt. Oh, and "In the Heights" can also tug at your heartstrings with the sweet longing and tenderness that imbue its narrative. SO WHAT HAPPENED? Huh. Maybe we should ask: why should the rest of the country be interested in a movie about an ethnic subgroup in New York City? More specifically, we're at a moment where white nativist ideas struggle for dominance everywhere between the coasts. So why would nativist types watch a musical about brown people's struggles and aspirations? Other issues hinder "In the Heights'" national debut. Through the movie runs a subtext that few have cared to note. It's the threat of Washington Heights, an old Latino neighborhood in Manhattan,succumbing to gentrification, to affluent whites moving in, driving up rents, and obliterating local color. It's a protest against encroaching white influence--against the same yuppies and hipsters and tourists who flocked to Tribeca to see the movie and came back with breathless reviews. This particular set of New York whites has overlooked the movie's subtle indictment of their kind, but I'll bet that whites elsewhere get the message and they reject it. Anything else? Well, yes. "In the Heights" details the trials and triumphs of two young urban couples-- and ALL of their family, neighbors and friends. It's a cluttered story line. Even so, it almost disappears within a maelstrom of noise, color and movement, a gaudy song-and-dance marathon assault on the senses. Singers and dancers perform in cinematic mobs worthy of DeMille. Worse, you're expected to countenance over two hours of this manic-operatic display, which manages to be exhausting, boring and enervating at once. I hear that Latinos haven't taken to "In the Heights", and I can guess at a few more reasons why. The two male leads are slight of frame and mild of manner, not believable as the red-blooded macho love interests they're supposed to be. The two female leads are skinny, pale and flat, not the lush Latina babes one would expect. Both couples' frantic musical cavorting evidences no sexual attraction. (Surprised?) Also,I suspect that the movie's portrayal of Hispanics as ghetto dwellers who like to squawk, shake their asses and wear tacky rags hasn't gone over well with real Hispanics. A local Puerto Rican wunderkind is being hailed as the thing's "creator" by New York critics (who no doubt had some nudging from his well - connected daddy, a veteran public relations operative.) And the young "creator" DID create the music and lyrics and what he calls the"concept", whatever that means. But let's not dwell on him ad nauseam,the way half of New York has done. If you ask me, he's already taken too much credit for this enterprise--virtually pushing aside the woman who wrote the book. Who knows? Maybe some day, she'll thank him.