Metacritic reviews

"BOOM!” is an entertaining, heart-filling work that showcases two musical geniuses, putting a new spotlight on Larson’s musical legacy and giving Miranda another endeavor to gift us with his unparalleled artistry.

On a level of sheer cinematic flourish, Miranda’s adaptation is a triumph; he really harnesses Larson’s songs for the screen and gives them tremendous life, whether or not you’d seen them before on stage.

Lin-Manuel Miranda gives us an unashamed sugar rush of showbiz rapture and showbiz solemnity in this heartfelt tribute to Broadway talent Jonathan Larson, played here by Andrew Garfield.

What’s refreshing about the debuting director’s approach is that it feels relatively egoless. His style is playful and energetic, often intercutting between multiple threads within a given song or scene, but it doesn’t feel as if Miranda is calling attention to himself so much as trying to open up the show.

Miranda’s film finds a graceful balance between fact and fiction, framing art as a heightened form of self obsession and the most magical and important thing in the world.

If Miranda’s tendency towards showmanship can leave Tick, Tick…Boom! feeling a little insistent in places, it also means the film shares its hero’s jet-propelled determination to do his own thing – whether the world happens to be braced for it or not.

A film so calibrated when humming forward starts to lose its tonal footing when Jon’s creative spark dims to a too-faint flicker.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial debut is an affectionate, if flawed, Valentine to both musical theatre and the art of creativity — some bum notes, some strong moments. Tick, tick… the jury’s out.

Strenuously heartfelt, Tick,Tick…Boom! belts it out like a pro, but increasingly feels as if it’s raising the volume to an emptying room.

Not so surprisingly, it’s a movie made by theatre geeks, for theatre geeks, though feasibly to a severe fault. In other words: if you know the songs and faces on screen, you’re bound to enjoy it infinitely more than a casual movie-goer will.