I want to start this out by saying that despite everything I’m about to say, I’m very glad that people are so excited about “In The Heights”. Lin Manuel Miranda’s original musical was already clearly influenced by cinema—the “Do the Right Thing” (1989) parallels in the setting are pretty blatant—so it seems fitting that after his wild success with “Hamilton” (2015), his first labor of love is finally able to get a big budget screen adaptation. It’s also exciting to see such a high profile movie that is almost exclusively staffed and performed by Hispanic actors and filmmakers, considering that Latine people in the American film industry have historically been demeaned, replaced (Natalie Wood is no Puerto Rican), and put into awful roles. With all this said, despite all the talent and effort put into this movie by the writers and performers, I left it feeling empty.

But before we get into the things which bugged me, let me tell you why it’s likely you will love the movie. The songs are, for the most part, excellent. Lin Manuel Miranda is a pretty terrific song writer, and even though you should probably know exactly how his raps flow now because of “Hamilton”, they’re still ravenous ear worms at the best of times. And the soundtrack isn’t all hip hop, either. There are your typical romance and “I want” songs, but there are also so many bombastic, unabashedly Latin-style songs which do wonders to characterize everyone in the film. Each of the songs’ instrumentals are a phenomenal work of composition and sound mixing. Even when the characters aren’t singing and dancing, the writing is quite good. I mean, it’s not Shakes- actually, I don’t like Shakespeare that much. It’s not Lorraine Hansberry, but the characters are pretty well written and the story tackles interesting themes of cultural identity and family heritage in ways you won’t find other musicals doing.

So with all that out of the way, what did I not like? Well, I thought the film was presented kind of abysmally. This probably mostly comes down to the director, Jon M. Chu, who, apart from his work on “Crazy Rich Asians” (2018), has mostly worked on bottom-of-the-barrel stuff like “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” (2013) and the universally panned “Jem and the Holograms” (2015). With the knowledge that the most well liked movie of his career so far was a romantic comedy, it’s not unsurprising that this is one of the most lousily shot musicals I’ve seen in recent memory. Rarely are there choices ever made in the composition to emphasize the emotion of a scene, the color finds new ways to be poorly utilized at every turn, and the horrible editing conveys a serious lack of confidence in the film’s visuals. Let’s knock these out one by one.

The easiest thing to explain is the color. Unless there is a literal colored light shining on an actor, the colors just don’t pop in the way that they really should in a musical, and don’t fit the tone of the movie in the way that they could. Let’s zero in on one thing: the heat. In the film, it’s the hottest couple of days of the summer, and every single character constantly draws attention to that in their dialogue. Disregarding that lots of people are wearing clothes which are probably too warm, let’s take a look at how the color conveys this constant heat, which, let me remind you, is a very important part of the film’s setting.

Now, what does this shot do to visually convey the scorching heat? Well, it doesn’t, really. The day is overcast, and much like the rest of the film’s outside scenes, is overwhelmingly gray. Along with that, the actors are in undoubtedly warm jeans and are completely dry, nary a drop of sweat to be found. But I can hear you now, screaming at your screen in the middle of the night. “Max, Max, you rube, how are they supposed to make it look hot? Isn’t dialogue enough?” Well, I’m glad you asked! Here’s how a movie with a terrific director did it.