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‘Blue Moon’ Review: A Shimmering Script About Ol’ Broadway Struggles to Accommodate the Wrong Star
No amount of hairpieces or trick shots can transform Ethan Hawke into Lorenz Hart, which is too bad, since it gets in the way of a wonderful movie.
Witticist-lyricist Lorenz Hart would cringe at the pun, but “ Blue Moon ” is nothing if not a funny valentine to the tortured (closeted, Jewish, alcoholic, diminutive) songwriter who died in 1943 at age 48, having drunk too much on opening night of his final collaboration with composer Richard Rodgers. Confined almost entirely to a single location, “Blue Moon” unspools at Sardi’s, the legendary midtown New York restaurant, immediately following the opening of “Oklahoma!” For Hart, showing up (without a love of his own) must have felt like attending the wedding of the woman he dated for two dozen years, and with whom he’d conceived at least as many kids. Hawke clearly relishes the reams of great dialogue he gets to deliver here, but I can’t begin to imagine why he or Linklater (who’ve collaborated on eight of the indie director’s features before) thought the Texas-born bohemian was right for the role of a short, balding, gay Jew from Harlem.
Or read this on Variety