Emily Cobb

To begin, I’ve been listening to Lin Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights for at least a year or two now on Spotify. Even without seeing the musical, his score evokes emotion and portrays a story that you don’t even have to see to imagine. Now, the movie, I have a bit of a bone to pick with. First of all, one of my ABSOLUTE favorite numbers in the musical is Sunrise which features Benny and Nina professing their love for each other. It wasn’t exactly the same in the movie...(skip spoilers if you don’t want them, I’ll mark the end of them) !!!POTENTIAL SPOILERS!!! —> they got rid of that song and replaced it with something else I really didn’t like as much because it kind of changed the story. Additionally the fight that happened between Vanessa and US Navy was supposed to be between Benny and Nina. Because Benny attributed Nina going to school as directly impacting his job, which it did. The character development was just so much better with Benny, Nina, and Nina’s dad in the original soundtrack/musical. They took out more than one song, actually, they removed Paciencia Fe and Inulti. Also they never showed Abuela Claudia figuring out she won the lottery ticket, in her dying breaths at the blackout she tells US Navy to keep the money safe she won. They spun this to where US NAVY finds her lottery ticket after her death. !!!NO MORE SPOILERS!!! Needless to say, the movie was very well done even if some of my favorite parts were taken out. There was a lot of great dancing numbers and they did a really good job of integrating the music into a film. It’s definitely worth the watch if you’re contemplating it.