Blue Moon reviewed: Richard Linklater’s bittersweet Broadway biopic

An unstoppable juggernaut

At this point the musical biopic is an unstoppable juggernaut of a genre. Picture a heedless commercial Cybertruck speeding on regardless of artistic success or audience appetite. In 2025 we had Bob and the Boss. In 2026 we’re promised some strange new version of the Michael Jackson and Bee Gees stories. And beyond that there’s the gathering storm of Sam Mendes’ Beatles cinematic event.

But I’d be willing to bet that none come close to the wit, insight and bittersweet glory of Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon. It’s the story of the last days of a poète maudit of the Broadway musical. His name was Lorenz Hart (lyricist of “My Funny Valentine” among many others).

Rhe grim writing on the wall

On the face of it, it’s a modest affair, more a one-man stage show than a feature film. It’s 1943, New York, the opening night of Oklahoma! and Hart has slipped out of a show he finds irredeemably cornball to hold court with his favourite bartender while the triumphant reception is being prepared at Sardi’s. After two decades coining couplets for Richard Rodgers’ levitating melodies, Hart’s neuroses and bad behaviour have finally seen him usurped as lyricist by the more reliable Oscar Hammerstein. He can see the grim writing on the wall.

But he’s nevertheless irrepressible, full of fierce, fresh ardour for an unlikely flame. Gawky, 20-year-old Yale co-ed Elizabeth Weiland, played by Margaret Qualley. The film becomes an aria of infatuation as he buttonholes every passing stranger, trying new ways to describe his passion. He’s like a more flamboyant Kevin Rowland at the start of “This Is What She’s Like”.

Unlikely casting and a stagey conceit

Hart is manifested in the unlikely form of Ethan Hawke, filmically foreshortened to five feet. He struggles to climb onto his bar stool and is crowned with a bathetic combover instead of a laurel wreath.

It’s unlikely casting and a stagey conceit. But somehow, like the most endearingly implausible Lorenz Hart couplet, it pays off spectacularly. For all Hawke’s storied history with Richard Linklater, this might be their finest collaboration yet. A profound, bittersweet rhapsody to the power of words and music.