For months I’ve been thinking that Quiara Alegría Hude and Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s In The Heights (HBO Max, 6.18) may be a better, more rousing thing than Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story (20th Century, 12.10), which I’ve been secretly scared of for a long time. The original West Side Story B’way musical is over 63 years old, having came out of the Upper West Side jungle of the early to mid ’50s. In The Heights is based on a 2007 Off-B’way show, and is therefore at least part of this century. The only thing that scares me about the film version is the possibility that director John Chu might inject some of the same glossy emptiness that made Crazy Rich Asians such a painful thing to sit through.
