Blue Moon opens with quote from Oscar Hammerstein about Lorenz Hart: "He was alert and dynamic and fun to be around." Frustratingly, the movie then goes on to depict Hart as the kind of crashing bore you'd do almost anything to escape. For almost the entire running time Larry is engaged in a self-indulgent monologue about himself, with endless boastful references to his lyrical triumphs interspersed with his disdain for various rivals. There's nothing at all "fun" about it, unless you're inclined to revel in this kind of bitterness and self-flagellation. Ethan Hawke's performance as Hart - aided by a shaved head and greasy combover - is the kind of masturbatory turn finely calibrated to win admiring reviews and award nominations, even as it renders the character ever more insufferable, and finally loathsome. The one scene in which Hart isn't obsessed with himself has him obsessed with his beautiful 20-year-old "protege", with whom we're supposed to believe he is hopelessly in love (a notion perilously based on Hart's actual correspondence with Elizabeth Weiland). While writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater seem to have convinced themselves that this is believable, I seriously doubt any gay viewer or anyone appraised of the wisdom and self-awareness evident in Hart's lyrics will buy it for even a second. The scenes with Elizabeth, which so desperately strive to be poignant, not only ring hollow, they leave one wondering why a movie about Hart, who was unquestionably gay, needs to try so hard to convince us that he could also love a woman. I suspect I know why, but let's not go there. Suffice to say, this kind of archness is evident throughout. At one point, a young boy with Oscar Hammerstein, who the cognoscenti will guess is supposed to be Stephen Sondheim, is improbably rude about Hart's "sloppy" lyrics - an observation made decades later by Sondheim in his scholarly critiques of other lyricists. In the same scene Hart quips that "weighty affairs will just have to wait" - a quintessentially Sondheim lyric from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to The Forum. Yes, it's that kind of wank-fest. But never mind, if that's not your idea of hilarity, watching the extremes to which Linklater goes to emphasise Hart's shortness may have you in stitches. Even sitting on a high bar stool, Hawke somehow still looks like one of the seven dwarves. But it's not a complete waste of time. If nothing else, Blue Moon left me with a new appreciation of the oft-derided 1948 film about Hart, Words and Music. That movie may also have stretched credulity to the limit, but Mickey Rooney was at least vaguely likeable.
