I’m sure we all know that person you avoid at a party. The one you try to escape during a conversation, who everyone internally cringes at when they open their mouths. I would like to think that Richard Linklater, the director of “Blue Moon,” took the attributes of that person, bottled them up and put them in this movie as the diminutive and detestable Lorenz “Larry” Hart.
I don’t know that much about old Broadway or the story of Larry Hart, so I’m not entirely sure if he was as much of an annoying creep as the movie portrayed him. History aside, I simply wonder why a person would make a movie about someone who is so unlikable?
Many movies have vexing or awkward main characters. My mind immediately jumps to "Napoleon Dynamite.” Yes, Napoleon is socially awkward and sometimes hard to watch, but he is also innocently charming and someone who changes by the end of the movie. But in “Blue Moon,” there’s nothing innocently charming about a 47-year-old man obsessing over a 20-year-old college student. And there is no room for character development in the one evening this film takes place.
“Blue Moon” tells the story of Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) when he attends a restaurant party the night of the opening of the show, “Oklahoma!” We follow Hart and his obsessions with a college girl, Elizabeth (Margaret Qualley), and several awkward conversations with those present. Throughout the night, Hart gets the cold shoulder by his previous writing partner, Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott), and given a foreseeable rejection by his “irreplaceable Elizabeth.”
I would like to praise Hawke’s performance. He unfortunately does a terrific job portraying someone I am endlessly infuriated with. I had several physical reactions in the theater watching him interact with the other characters. When he pestered Richard Rodgers about writing a Marco Polo musical, I put my face in my hands waiting for it to end. When he rambles to the pianist in the bathroom, I laughed when the pianist suddenly left the room with Hart mid-sentence — I was jealous because I wanted to leave the room, too.
If the filmmakers’ objective for this movie was to make the audience cringe for an hour and 40 minutes, they certainly succeeded. However, I don’t give grace to films that are purposefully difficult to watch. If the intent was to be annoying, I don’t praise the film for fulfilling its intent; I criticize the intent itself.
And what a runtime, too. For a movie already under two hours, it seems to need even less. The film is mainly one character talking at another. While you might think that sounds like normal dialogue, it unfortunately wasn’t.
I am a huge fan of dialogue-heavy films. I am, however, not a fan of monologue-heavy films. And whether it be Larry Hart talking the ear off of another character, or Elizabeth telling a lengthy story about her birthday, hearing a single person ramble is hardly ever a good recipe for emotional conversations between characters.
The last thing I want to mention was the film’s laughable attempts at easter eggs. The inclusion of E.B. White in the story, because apparently the screenwriter thought we needed an origin for the idea of “Stuart Little,” is a prime example. Hart talks to White about a mouse, whom he’s named Stuart, that he often finds in his apartment. White then looks intrigued and writes this decidedly novel idea down before leaving the bar. I even looked this up to see if this interaction actually happened, and it almost certainly didn’t. This moment added nothing to the already flimsy story and just seemed to depict E.B. White as someone less creative than he actually was.
I love watching movies that make me cry, but I understand that some people purposefully avoid movies for that reason. In the same vein, I purposefully avoid movies that annoy me. However, if you enjoy movies that annoy you, “Blue Moon” is the perfect film for you.
