Dear Evan Hansen (film)

Dear Evan Hansen is a 2021 American coming-of-age musical film directed by Stephen Chbosky and written by Steven Levenson (in his feature film screenwriting debut), based on the 2015 stage musical by Levenson, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. Ben Platt plays the title role, reprising the performance that he originated on stage six years earlier. The cast also includes Kaitlyn Dever, Amandla Stenberg, Nik Dodani, Colton Ryan, Danny Pino, Julianne Moore, and Amy Adams.

Dear Evan Hansen premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, 2021, as the opening night presentation, and was released in the United States on September 24 by Universal Pictures. The film underperformed at the box office and received mostly negative reviews from critics. Most of the criticism was aimed at the casting of 27-year-old Ben Platt as a high school student, which some, for example video essayist Jenny Nicholson, attributed to nepotism, as his father Marc Platt was a producer on the film. Criticism was also aimed at its direction, screenplay, visual style, lack of faithfulness to its source material, and portrayal of mental illness, though the supporting cast's performances received some praise.