REVIEW: In The Heights

Let me preface this with the following: I love the boniqua's. I do. This Broadway musical was full of them! In The Heights is a musical about people from Washington Heights and received multiple awards as well as critical acclaim, including the winner Best Musical 2008 Music Award. This is a tale about way uptown NYC; a story of "American Dreaming to a Latin Beat". Nothing against Latin beats, when they're good they're great, but this was a mixture of Broadway pop and forced rap lyrics weren't rhyming to contrived hip-hop beats. Fortunately, between every confusing song there were the dancing boniqua's, the highlight of the show. If you have, or haven't seen the show, I will try not to spoil anything for you, but the song "96,000" was some of the worst crap I've ever had to force myself to listen to - that, and when my girlfriend flips to the Wedding Central Channel, yeesh!

The characters consist of two male leads and two female leads, and they were all outshone by the woman who played the grandma (and she sucked!). This old lady managed to produce some of the worst acting as a completely unbelievable latino grandmother, and then during her song Paciencia Y Fe, managed to completely wow me with her vocals - credit where credit is due, but the English translation of that song is Patience and Faith. From the 0.00001% of me that I think could be Jewish, Oy Vey. You see where this crapfest is going?

One female lead, Vanessa (Marcy Harriell), looked like a baby eater. What's a baby eater you say? They are people that, by the look of their face, would appear as though they would eat babes - skeletal face, larger eyes than their head should fit, larger mouth than proportional, larger teeth for the already large mouth; those are some characteristics of a baby eat. Yeah, Vanessa, she looked like one. The other female lead, Nina (Mandy Gonzalez), was playing a person who went to college for a year and was forced to drop out. Unfortunately for us, Mandy Gonzalez looked like the was on the wrong side of 35. First year of college, really? Really?! C'mon! To top it off, they both produced my #1 singing pet peeve - singing the "R's". "Fah-theRRR!" Amateur.

Maybe I'm a little too harsh. I guess I just don't see what the big fuss is about. The Broadway pop stuff wasn't turrible, but the forced rap/hip-hop was just horrendous. Two interesting notes; in that crap song "96,000" they reference Frodo. I gave a little chuckle from that, because there was nothing else to keep me interesting. Second interesting note: The main character's name is Usnavi (Oos-Nah-Vee), and he says that his parents named his after a sign on a boat when they got to America - U.S.Navy. Ahh, stupid people. On the positive side, the choreography was excellent; thank god and whoever else for the boniqua's!

Other bad songs from the musical; Champagne, and In the Heights. Let's try rhyming! Most flagrant lyrical infraction since Steve Miller Band rhymed "...facts is..." with "...taxes..." (2nd verse). You've been warned!