Blue Moon

Blue Moon (2025) is a biographical comedy drama movie directed by Richard Linklater and it follows a songwriter as he reflects on himself on the opening night of Oklahoma!, a new musical by his former colleague. This is a movie that I had my eye on for a while because of Richard Linklater and the movie was really good.

Positives for Blue Moon (2025): I like the initial setup and premise of the movie taking place in one setting and having characters talk about stuff. I also liked the costumes design and makeup to have these people look like they're from a different decade. The acting from the cast is really good specifically Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale and Andrew Scott. The pacing is really good and it feels like the movie is taking it's time with the storytelling. And finally, the old school music is really good.

Negatives for Blue Moon (2025): Aside from seeing these characters talk about music, nothing else really happens in the movie. I did enjoy seeing these people talk, but it was just that for 100 minutes. I also don't see this movie work for casual audiences at all. And finally, I was waiting for something big to happen and nothing happened.

Overall, Blue Moon (2025) is a great movie that will be enjoyed by fans of Richard Linklater, but casual fans will have a hard time getting invested which is fine because this movie isn't for them. I would recommend this if you're a fan of Richard Linklater and the story.

"Blue Moon" is quintessentially Richard Linklater. A film with heavy dialogue but rich in character and depth.

Some might call this film boring, but what helps keep engagement levels is a strong performance by Ethan Hawke accompanied by a decently written screenplay.

The entire film feels like a theatre play brought to life on the big screen. It takes place in one bar but manoeuvers through conversations with different characters each with their own quirk.

I think what makes this film shine is Lorenz Harz (Hawke). A poor soul at the end of his time clinging to his past successes. A lonely man wanting love. As a film progresses, we learn more about our main character increasing our empathy and sadness for him.

In saying this, it is a film that struggles to reach the heights to call it a masterpiece. I feel like it's structure and style hinders it's ability in doing so.

I also will mention that I think Margaret Qualley was not strong enough in the female lead. With someone with not much dialogue, I felt like a stronger presence was needed to bring her character to life.

All in all, a decent movie but nothing to get too excited about.

7/10.

I have a passionate interest in musical theatre history, especially the post-World War II period. If you fall into this category, I think you'll really enjoy this movie despite the fact that it's not very cinematic. If, however, you couldn't care less about this subject, you'll be wondering what the heck was that? This is the story of the final days of wunderkind lyricist Lorenz Hart, who wrote the lyrics to some of the American Song Book's greatest songs, like "My Funny Valentine," "Where or When," "I Didn't Know What Time It Was," "My Heart Stood Still," and of course, "Blue Moon." Hart and composer Richard Rodgers had a string of hits from the 1920s into the 1940s. Both of them were heavy drinkers, but Rodgers was able to control his better. With the passage of time, Hart, according to Rodgers, became impossible to work with, so he found a new lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein II, who had already had a long career with other composers, including Sigmund Romberg, Rudolf Friml, as well as an especially fruitful collaboration with Jerome Kern. (When Kern died, Hammerstein also needed a partner.) Hart sank further and further into alcoholism. This film takes place on the opening night of OKLAHOMA, which ushered in a new era in the American musical theatre. It was a true landmark (although some might argue successfully that SHOWBOAT really did). The party takes place at Sardi's and Hart is there early talking to the bartender and the pianist, while waiting for the curtain to come down on opening night so the party can begin. He knows it's going to be a huge hit, bigger than any success he had with Rodgers. He's understandably envious. The fist half of the film is basically a monologue with Hart (played by Ethan Hawke, who is not ideal casting) recapitulating his history and his crush on a young socialite/college student who is also the daughter of one of the leaders of the producing powerhouse, The Theatre Guild. He gets drunker and drunker as he talks. The girl is played by up-and-coming actress Margaret Qualley (THE SUBSTANCE and HONEY DON'T). Her role is very minor up until the last half hour of the film, when SHE has a long monologue. As you can probably tell, this is not very cinematic material. It's more like a play by Eugene O'Neill where nobody ever has an unexpressed thought, especially when their tongues are loosened by alcohol. Hart adores the girl, but he is basically gay. And she knows it. And that's the gist of the film. If you're already a musical theatre fan you'll like this movie, but if you're not, you'll probably be bored out of your mind.

Ethan Hawke really gets to show off his theater chops in what's essentially a one-man show about Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart, trying to remain relevant to any who'll listen one night in 1943 at Sardi's. But despite the witticisms and urbanity Hawke is essentially one-note in his patter, and you eventually start to feel like Sarah Connor's dream in T2, clinging to a chain-link fence and being flailed to the bone by his nuclear, non-stop desperation. It's nice he and Linklater have a longtime devotion to each other and have stretched out into this new territory for their as always dialogue-heavy collaborations, but you'll be heading to the bar for some welcome cirossis long before little Lorenz corners you with his next needy, horrifying salvo of yammering.

Soon after I began my freshman year at George Mason University in the mid-1990s, a new book titled THE COMPLETE LYRICS OF LORENZ HART entered the GMU library's collection. Through this and similar books I (who was already a musical theatre fan) became particularly interested in the Broadway musicals of the 1910s through the early 1940s; among the lyricists of that period, my favorite was Lorenz Hart whose collaboration with composer Richard Rodgers commenced in 1925. From such Rodgers and Hart recordings as the 1983 revival cast CD of ON YOUR TOES and the 1989 studio cast CD of BABES IN ARMS, I formed an impression of Hart the lyricist as equally witty to Cole Porter yet melancholier and more self-deprecating than the suave Porter ever was. These qualities of Hart's style seemed to stem from his perceived personal troubles: the quintessential outsider, he was Jewish (which would have made him an outcast in certain non-theatrical circles), short, homely, an alcoholic, and perpetually unlucky in love. While Hart unsuccessfully pursued many women, he was rumored to be gay-a rumor he himself neither confirmed nor denied-as well as something of a voyeur. The same emotional baggage that made Hart's private life miserable makes him a natural movie character; of the two movies that have dramatized Hart's life, 2025's BLUE MOON is the darker and more thought-provoking film.

Whereas 1948's WORDS AND MUSIC (an MGM production with Mickey Rooney as Lorenz Hart) surveyed Hart's heyday as a lyricist, BLUE MOON shows him on a particular night in 1943, the final year of his life. Having ceased to work with Richard Rodgers after a disagreement, he attends the premiere of OKLAHOMA!, Rodgers' first hit musical with his new lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II. This rather brave act of Hart's is undermined by his churlish, sour attitude at Sardi's Restaurant where most of the film is set; as he waits for Rodgers and Hammerstein and their guests to arrive for the opening-night celebration, Hart denigrates OKLAHOMA! To anyone who will listen-namely, a bartender who tries not to serve him alcohol and a young pianist who is on leave from military duty in the ongoing World War. When Rodgers, et al. Do pour in, much of Hart's cynicism vanishes and we see how desperate he is to reconcile with Rodgers and resume their collaboration. We also see how desperate he is for one last chance at romance when Elizabeth Weiland, a blonde Yale theatre student whom he has been "mentoring," arrives for a rendezvous with the sadly washed-up middle-aged lyricist.

BLUE MOON is extremely well acted, with Ethan Hawke giving the performance of a lifetime as Hart. At times the screenplay seems less like a movie and more like a theatre script-one that contains, in my opinion, far more profanity than is necessary to convey that Hart is a wag and is bitter about the fact that Hammerstein has replaced him. Perhaps the screenplay's best aspect is that it offers a convincing counterpoint to Hart's complaint that OKLAHOMA! Is too corny to be great art, when Rodgers argues (I'm paraphrasing here), "Well, but the audience and most of the critics adored the show. Who are you to say that they don't know a good musical when they see one?" To be sure, the supposedly maudlin OKLAHOMA! Contains considerable darkness in the character of Jud, an outcast who might be said to resemble Hart in some ways. Though the movie never mentions this as a possibility, I wonder if Hart in real life saw something of himself in Jud and then sought to hide this recognition behind vehement criticism of OKLAHOMA! (Here I'm assuming that the actual Lorenz Hart disliked the show; I had always heard that he loved it-but, as he does in BLUE MOON, he may just have been concealing his dislike before Rodgers so as not to appear jealous of Hammerstein.) Regardless, I feel that a lesson BLUE MOON aims to teach is that one's artistic judgment ought ideally to be kept free of personal biases.

Although I am not at all sorry I saw it, BLUE MOON struck me as too relentlessly negative in tone to be a movie I'd want to watch multiple times. I was going to say that I would have preferred to see a modern film about Hart when he and Rodgers were writing hit musicals; but even a movie of this kind could not possibly avoid dealing with the addictions that, for example, compelled Rodgers to lock Hart in his room at New Jersey's Stockton Inn so that Hart would finish writing the lyric to the song "There's a Small Hotel" (ON YOUR TOES) rather than disappear on a drinking binge. BLUE MOON, therefore, can at least be commended for depicting Hart truthfully: as a brilliant, sensitive lyricist whose inability to achieve equanimity in his personal life eventually encroached on his professional life.