Andrew Scott is a marvel of a modern actor. From Sherlock to Fleabag to All of Us Strangers and Ripley, he burns onscreen. His dark eyes can reflect a murderous intensity or an unholy longing, or — in the case of Ripley — both. It’s little wonder that Scott’s performance in Blue Moon earned him the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year. It’s just a shame it’s for the supporting role in Richard Linklater’s latest.
The star of this insufferable biopic about American lyricist Lorenz Hart is Ethan Hawke, who’s previously won praise from critics for his work in Linklater movies like the Before trilogy (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight) and Boyhood. Perhaps Hawke deserves props for taking on the role of Hart, as this depiction is not just miles away from the cool but flawed men Hawke tends toward, but light-years from them. Written by Robert Kaplow, the novelist behind Me and Orson Welles, which Linklater adapted in 2008, Blue Moon oozes with maudlin sentimentality over this lost artist, but lacks depth.
Where Scott’s performance as Hart’s creative partner, composer Richard Rodgers, is riveting in its intensity and authenticity, Hawke’s performance is a clown show, making a mockery of a musical genius who was tragically overwhelmed by his worst impulses.
Blue Moon feels like a clumsy adaptation of a one-man off-off-off Broadway show.
Most of this movie is set on March 31, 1943, the opening night of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! on Broadway. Sulking in box seats as cowboys and farm gals sing joyfully is Hart, a middle-aged mope with a comb-over that’s long lost the war. As the packed house applauds, he exits early, eager to get to Sardi’s, the iconic bar where the afterparty will be held.
There, Larry (as he’s generally addressed) hopes to reconnect with Rodgers, with whom he worked for 25 years, creating such beloved songs as “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “My Funny Valentine,” and of course, “Blue Moon.” But Hart can see from the audience’s rapture that Oklahoma! (“with an exclamation point,” he laments) could be the end of his partnership with Rodgers, as Hammerstein’s lyrics are getting a lot of love.
However, before that setup, Kaplow begins the movie with Hart’s end. Drunk, drenched, and dying in a dark, rainy alley in New York City, Hart crumbles next to a dumpster, pathetic and alone. This image hangs over the entirety of the film like a storm cloud, making it difficult to find the humor in Hart’s desperate attempts at charm and conversation.
For an insufferable first act, he blathers resolutely to a beleaguered bartender (Bobby Cannavale), an eager pianist (Jonah Lees), and a patient patron (Patrick Kennedy). Kaplow dumps biographical backstory into these exchanges, so not knowing much about Hart isn’t a hindrance. But for all those details, Blue Moon is most interested in three things: Hart was drunk, gay, and short.
Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater make a queer clown of Lorenz Hart.
While historians today regard Hart as queer, he wasn’t public about his sexual orientation in life. Yet Kaplow writes him slinging gay jokes that employ slurs and gleefully calling himself a “cocksucker” to the dismayed straight bartender. When pressed on whether he likes boys or girls, Larry expresses that as a lyricist, he’s “omnisexual,” finding beauty in men, women, and horses because it helps his art. So here we are in 2025, conflating homosexuality and bestiality in a film meant to resurrect a tortured artist, displaying his agony and genius.
As Linklater did with Jack Black in Bernie, he casts a straight American movie star to play a gay antihero, and the result is a caricature less subtle than anything hanging on the walls of Sardi’s. Even before Larry starts drinking, Hawke commits to a bounciness that’s buffoonish. His performance is playing the cheap seats, with arched eyebrows and an endlessly winking attitude that’s better suited to Hollywood Squares. Making this more ridiculous are the lengths to which Linklater goes to get across that Hart was short, 5 feet tall at most.
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The Sardi’s set is built so that Cannavale absolutely towers over Hawke, who, at 5 feet 10 inches tall, is himself dwarfed by the furniture around him. Seated at the bar, he strains to reach the ledge for a shot glass. Wide shots get even sillier, recalling the extent to which Peter Jackson went to make hobbits believably wee next to Gandalf. Perhaps this visual effect was meant to reflect how Hart’s physical stature may have fed into his feeling small before others he admired. But it looks ludicrous.
Margaret Qualley exudes old-school elegance in Blue Moon.
Thankfully, after an aching stretch of Larry clowning around to a nearly empty bar, other characters show up who refuse to be “extras” — as Larry snidely writes off the bartender. Among them is Margaret Qualley, playing a Yale art student named Elizabeth Weiland, who is as free-spirited as she is glamorous. She is Larry’s protégé and current fixation. Before her arrival, he rants about her beauty and brilliance as if she not only hung the moon, but created it whole cloth. But this too feeds into a tedious trope, in which a gay man idolizes a gorgeous, bold woman in a way that is objectifying, even if not sexual.
Despite his loud, earnest pining for Elizabeth, no one — not even she — believes him. Instead, it seems he envies her as he envies Richard — as someone beautiful and talented who is easy to love.
Blue Moon is so steeped in Larry’s self-loathing that he denounces its title song, even as others praise it. He lies, sneaks, and steals to achieve even the slightest adoration from others, be they a flower delivery boy or the idolized Elizabeth. And in this desperation, Hawke’s performance might evoke Jon Lovitz’s dated Harvey Fierstein impersonation, with the screeching catchphrase, “I just wanna be loved, is that so wrong!?”
To Qualley’s credit, she shoulders the role of this dream girl well, bringing a deeper inner life to Elizabeth through a cringe-inducing monologue about a sexual exploit gone comically wrong. In this scene, at least, Linklater and Kaplow make Elizabeth more than an ideal for their needy hero to fawn over. As she enters Sardi’s, with her comes a different tone, a more grounded performance style that makes Hawke’s over-the-top capering all the more jarring.
Andrew Scott is the best part of Blue Moon.
Finally, at long last, the Oklahoma! contingent arrives, and with their glitz and excitement, they sweep away the maudlin clouds of Larry’s monologuing. Sardi’s is swinging. Rodgers (Scott) and Oscar Hammerstein (Simon Delaney) are the toast of New York! And Larry is trying and failing to be a good sport.
Sure, when he first arrived at the bar he was spitting bile about how lame this Broadway musical is, but now he’s all praise. Yet from the moment Richard locks eyes on Larry, something tender and genuinely tragic takes root in Blue Moon.
Richard is polite but guarded as Larry begins to chatter at him, speaking of how they ought to do a show together about comedic cannibals. While Larry is essentially hustling for his very livelihood, well-meaning glad-handers interject to shower praise on Richard. To them, Larry is practically invisible.
Scott switches focus from the drowning man to the smiling fans repeatedly with a striking eloquence that suggests Richard has done this dance with Larry many, many times before. Even now, as their partnership seems at its end, he’s shielding him from embarrassment, protective and pained by the need to.
As the afterparty drags on, Larry pushes Richard more and more, provoking him into a confrontation about who they were together as a creative partnership, how far they’ve come, and what could be next. But where Larry is lost in the past, Richard sees a future that moves beyond him. Amid the frustration and patience Scott brings into these achingly public heart-to-hearts, which grow messier with each reconnection, he also brings in heartbreak. As he’s publicly drinking himself to death, Larry might joke that everyone acts like they’re eulogizing him prematurely. But Scott plays Richard as if he can see it’s not so premature, because the only person who could stop this downward spiral has been sneaking shots of whiskey all night long.
Scenes where Larry’s loves — be they platonic or romantic — challenge him are when Blue Moon works. The capering of this clown collides with characters aching and elegant who don’t buy his act, and in that Linklater scratches at the profound. All Larry wants is to be seen and loved, not as he is but as he wishes he could be. He spends enormous, exhausting energy trying to convince handsome young men, gorgeous young women, and his closest friend of this facade, and that is perhaps his greatest flaw. There is a bittersweet and beautiful tragedy in that, but with all the buffoonery, Blue Moon won’t let this heartbreaking thread shine.
Blue Moon was reviewed out of the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. It opens in limited release on Oct. 17, before going wide Oct. 24.
