| Drama, Musical |
Director: Jon M. Chu
Writers: Quiara Alegría Hudes
Cast: Anthony Ramos, Corey Hawkins, Leslie Grace, Melissa Barrera
Release Date (Theaters): Jun 10, 2021 Wide
Release Date (Streaming): Jun 10, 2021
Runtime: 2h 23m
SYNOPSIS:
A film version of the Broadway musical in which Usnavi, a sympathetic New York bodega owner, saves every penny every day as he imagines and sings about a better life.
MOVIE REVIEW:
IN THE HEIGHTS is the big-screen version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first diverse Tony Award-winning musical, which tells the story of a group of friends living in the predominantly Latinx neighborhood of Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan. It’s structured as a flashback, with bodega owner Usnavi (Anthony Ramos) telling a bunch of kids about the corner where he lived and ran his store. On the hottest day of the summer, he decides to close his bodega and buy the place on the beach where he and his late father spent the “best days of his life” in the Dominican Republic. Then he finds out that someone has bought a $96,000-winning lottery ticket at his store, and everyone starts to wonder about what they’d do with the money. Usnavi’s friends and neighbors include Daniela (Daphne Rubin-Vega), whose beauty salon is about to move to the Bronx because of gentrification, and Benny (Corey Hawkins), who works as a car-service dispatcher and eagerly awaits the arrival of his boss’s (Jimmy Smits) daughter, Nina (Leslie Grace), who just finished her first year at Stanford. There’s also Usnavi’s lifelong crush, Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), a stylist at Daniela’s who dreams of moving to the West Village and working in the fashion industry, and Cuban American matriarch Abuela Claudia (Olga Merediz, reprising her Broadway role), who cooks for and looks after everyone, especially Usnavi and his younger cousin, Sonny (Gregory Diaz IV). Miranda appears as the local piragua seller, who walks around peddling the flavored shaved ice from a cart.
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