Dear Evan Hansen

It's the cinema equivalent of rubbing cut onions in the eyes of the audience: film-making that is cynically and artificially engineered to make the audience weep.

The endless emotional frankness of the lyrics - those who seek the ironic distance of Sondheim need look elsewhere - becomes exhausting all too quickly.

The film is aggressively needy.

The film becomes one giant gamble that's quite disastrously failed to pay off.

On all fronts, you wish that Dear Evan Hansen had nothing to do with Evan Hansen.

The problems start the more sincere it all gets - with a deeply dubious message for children and parents alike that the world is a place of infinite forgiveness. As Ben Platt would learn - not quite.

It is an interesting premise for a horror. It is a weird idea for an inspirational story.

...this should be a cult movie; with consistently good songs and a unique aesthetic, it's a secret success that may take years to be recognised...

It certainly won't be for everyone but does just about get there in the end.

Tender performances by Julianne Moore and Amy Adams, playing distressed mothers, can't save this film.