‘Hamilton’ holds up in its shot as a Disney+ holiday treat
The Tony-winning blockbuster transfers to the screen without missing a beat. Preview,
When it comes to writing about “Hamilton,” I am not throwing away my shot.
See, this pop-culture reference makes much more sense once you’ve actually seen Lin-Manuel Miranda’s game-changing Broadway musical. A filmed production arrives Friday on Disney+ as everyone’s Fourth of July entertainment in a locked-down world while also introducing the show to a huge population that’s never had the pleasure of seeing it.
That number includes me, though not for lack of trying. For the past five years, as “Hamilton” became a Tony-conquering phenomenon and the hottest ticket in New York (and everywhere a touring production might be in town), I avoided it. Never listened to the soundtrack, looked past memes, eschewed YouTube clips, stayed away from the Wikipedia page, all to have as fresh an experience as possible. After playing many ticket lotteries (always losing, of course), I finally had tickets to a Kennedy Center show until a pandemic foiled those plans, though it also shifted the “Hamilton” movie from theaters to streaming.
So is it worth all the hype? Oh, yes. And then some.
“Hamilton,” which captures a 2016 performance by the show’s original cast, is a rousing history lesson about where we started as a country and a character study of young, scrappy and hungry immigrant Alexander Hamilton (Miranda), who became a revolutionary hero, Founding Father and tragic figure. Inspired by everything from hip-hop and R&B to jazz and Broadway standards, the songs fill you with life, and in between tunes, the dialogue – mostly rapped – is just as gloriously musical.
Every character has a vibrant quality. Imagine James Brown as Thomas Jefferson – that’s the showboating take created by Daveed Diggs, who also manages to imbue a second character, Marquis de La