‘Cyrano’ overview: Peter Dinklage stars in a musical film that may not hit sufficient of the suitable notes

Mayra StankoFebruary 26, 2022

39 2 minutes read

‘Cyrano’ overview: Peter Dinklage stars in a musical film that may not hit sufficient of the suitable notes

Dinklage trades within the customary prosthetic nostril for his stature, which supplies the obstacle listed right here to expressing his love for his cousin Roxanne (Haley Bennett), whose fondness for him is strictly platonic.

However of examine course, Roxanne has fallen for the good-looking Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), who no matter his hanging options lacks self-worth or kind when it would come to the artwork of romance. The awkward choice is for Cyrano to create to her (and in the well-known balcony scene, converse for him), expressing his love for Roxanne with no revealing the useful resource or his respectable feelings.

It actually is a troublesome story to screw up, and director Joe Wright (“Atonement,” and much more just lately “Darkest Hour”) wouldn’t. However the musical thrives get the job finished at best fitfully, partially due to the mediocrity of the tunes, and in portion merely due to these finishing up them, who’re usually on firmer flooring in the course of the spoken dramatic interludes.

Haley Bennett and Peter Dinklage in 'Cyrano.'

Actually, Dinklage’s talking voice is a really well-tuned instrument with out having resorting to trace, and the Emmy-successful “Recreation of Thrones” star supplies a respectable pathos to Cyrano’s plight to go together with the humor and swashbuckling associated with the position.

That reported, he joins excellent, expectations-raising cinematic enterprise in bringing this character to the show, corresponding to Jose Ferrer’s Oscar-winning (and in phrases of display depictions, standard-location) 1950 portrayal and Gerard Depardieu in a French mannequin 4 a few years afterwards. And of examine course, that may not point out all of the variations on the theme, a la “Roxanne,” starring Steve Martin or Netflix’s newest teenager variations “Sierra Burgess is a Loser” and “The Fifty % Of It.”

Like a number of newest releases, “Cyrano” has adopted a circuitous path to the display. The film obtained an Oscar-qualifying run — its lone nomination coming for costume design — then had its official launch delayed owing to the Omicron variant. It so comes afterward and with fewer fanfare than the producers clearly hoped.

Due to the solid (which additionally includes Ben Mendelsohn, within the neighborhood of-unrecognizable because the villainous De Guiche), “Cyrano” is really price seeing, both now or afterwards. However it’s a fairly modest addition to the title’s storied historic previous, only one precisely the place the audio subtracts not less than as a lot because it supplies to the story’s inherent poetry.

“Cyrano” premieres in select US theaters on Feb. 25. It may be rated PG-13.