Blue Moon is a Bust

2 stars

Ethan Hawke in a combover? Say no more.

Although working for decades as an entertainment journalist has allowed me to see dozens of musicals, I didn’t know anything about Lorenz Hart or his troubled partnership with Richard Rodgers before watching director Richard Linklater’s latest film, Blue Moon. In fact, I can’t remember seeing any of the 28 musicals they wrote. I know a few of the more popular songs they’ve written – My Funny Valentine, Isn’t it Romantic, Blue Moon – mainly through watching old black and white musicals with Fred Astaire or listening to various vocalists plow their way through the American Songbook. But that’s about it.

Having watched Blue Moon, I can’t say my knowledge of the men’s music is any greater, although given the way the pair interact with each other in the film, it’s a miracle anything ever got written at all. 

In the movie, Hawke plays Hart, a short, balding, alcoholic homosexual who, as the story opens, seems to be teetering on the edge of a total mental and emotional collapse. Not only has his long-time partnership with Rodgers ended, but he’s just had the humiliating experience of attending the opening night of the new play that his ex-partner has written with his new lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein II. And Hart has been around enough to know that that play, Oklahoma!, will become a Broadway phenomenon. 

It’s the theater geek’s equivalent of a season of Inside Baseball that never really translates beyond the chic New York nightclub where the post-opening night party for Rodgers and Hammerstein is being held. Linklater may be trying to tackle some bigger issues, like the nature of artistic genius and the demands it makes on creative types, but he assumes that anyone watching the film agrees that the guy who wrote the pop tune Blue Moon is a genius. Some may disagree, realizing that no matter how popular it was back in 1934, the song hasn’t aged well at all. The majority of people heading out to the movies these days won’t have ever heard of it. 

So if you don’t go see Blue Moon for the inside scoop or to learn more about the struggle of an artist to make art, then at least you get to see Hawke step outside his comfort zone to stretch his acting muscles. At least in a few scenes. When he’s sitting at the bar pontificating endlessly about everything, Hawke/Hart quickly becomes annoying. Instead of being swept up in Hart’s delusional diatribes, all I could think while listening was, did screenwriter Robert Kaplow get paid by the word? Hawke deserves credit just for remembering his lines, just as he deserves a round of applause for standing there looking foolish while Linklater tries all sorts of half-assed camera tricks to make the 5′ 10½″ actor look like the 5’ 0” lyricist. (PS, it never works.)

When he’s engaging with other characters/actors, like the bartender Eddie, the always delightful Bobby Cannavale, or his mysterious blonde friend, Elizabeth, a criminally underused Margaret Qualley, the Hawke/Hart creation is riveting to watch. Some of the best scenes in the movie are when Hawke/Hart shuts up and just reacts physically to what’s being said to him or about him. They’re so good that you even forget about the combover. Unfortunately, there’s just not enough of them.