Miranda lights fuse with Larson’s own musical story

Artists suffer, and fail, and work miracles, sometimes in the same frazzled measure of their lives. The late Jonathan Larson, who died at 35 in the final week of rehearsals for his off-Broadway (then Broadway, then everywhere) musical smash “Rent,” measured out his own tragically abbreviated life in ways that made him typical of a struggling musical theater composer/lyricist, as well as uniquely himself. He was not an easy-breathing collaborator by any accounts, but he was a seriously inspired one. He took inspiration from the greats and then, after his sudden death, went on to inspire so many more coming up behind him.

“Tick, Tick … Boom!” is the story of that life. It premiered first as a “rock monologue” by Larson himself in 1990. The piece expanded for ensemble performance after Larson’s passing, and now, “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda makes his feature directorial debut with a Netflix-backed screen adaptation starring Andrew Garfield as Larson.

For musical theater fans it’s catnip. And for anyone interested in why some stage-to-screen adaptations work and some don’t, “Tick, Tick … Boom!” offers a wealth of detail and a confident attack on the material.

We’re dealing with several overlapping frameworks here. We see Larson (Garfield) and company performing a stage production of “Tick, Tick … Boom!” in one frame. These moments, sometimes part of or most of entire numbers, zwoop in and out of scenes of Larson’s earlier, makeor-break Playwrights Horizons workshop. That workshop, attended by a crucially supportive Stephen Sondheim (Bradley Whitford), showcased a different, earlier Larson musical: a futuristic dystopian fantasy titled “Superbia.” The other important framework contains the how-he-did-it-and-atwhat-cost parts of Larson’s anxious, striving life, as he approached his 30th birthday and juggled his writing ambitions with his job at the Moondance Diner in SoHo.

The film, like the stage version, finds Larson eternally at one crossroads or impasse after another. His dancer girlfriend (Alexandra Shipp) can’t yank Jon’s head out of his work long enough for an honest conversation, or a decision on their future together. Jon’s lifelong best friend (Robin de Jesús), like many mutual friends, lives in the shadow of AIDS.

The bulk of “Tick, Tick … Boom!” takes place in 1990, but its concerns could be anytime, anywhere, any artist making any number of passive-aggressive decisions en route to creation. A lot of what happened in Larson’s life around this time found its way into “Rent,” the show Larson never got to see become the Broadway musical of the ’90s.

There are moments in director Miranda’s film when the visual flourishes crowd the clarity of a scene. In Garfield, we have a fine and ardently sincere actor who can sing and dance well enough, but who has yet to discover the value of holding back emotionally while delivering something vocally or physically. Meantime, the material itself never fully wrestles with what it’s like to live a life wherein “ambition,” as Larson himself wrote, “eats right through you.”

In other words, this is a celebration, not a dissection. On those terms, it’s also a great success.

MPAA rating: PG-13 (for some strong language, some suggestive material and drug references) Running time: 1:55 How to watch: Now in limited theatrical release and streaming on Netflix

MACALL POLAY/NETFLIX Andrew Garfield plays Jonathan Larson in “Tick, Tick ... Boom!”