Blue Moon Movie Review (2025)

Filled with theatricality, Blue Moon, about lyricist Lorenz Hart on the night former partner Richard Rodgers opens Oklahoma! with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, is like watching a play in three acts.

I was raised on the likes of Rodgers and Hammerstein. If The King And I wasn’t playing, Carousel was on. If it was too silent in the house, it was time for The Sound Of Music. These are some of the sounds of my childhood, and I’ve kept them going. My children went through a phase where we watched The Sound Of Music dozens of times, like other kids would watch animated movies. The music has held up.

Blue Moon centers on lyricist Lorenz Hart, a man who wrote numerous successful musicals and songs with Richard Rodgers in the 1920s and 1930s (such as “Blue Moon” and “My Funny Valentine”). On this specific night, Hart attends the opening of Rodgers’ new show, Oklahoma! written with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein. He cannot sit through it, so he leaves early and goes to Sardi’s restaurant to wait for the celebration afterward. While there, he talks to the bartender and the piano player about his work, his feelings about various art, and his obsession with the young Elizabeth.

Knowing that this film is based on real people in a time when musicals were being written by a new generation is fascinating. When you watch a show like Phantom Of The Opera, Wicked, or Oklahoma!, it is clear that each is from a different “generation of theatre.” So watching the blossoming of something new is exciting – to everyone but Hart.

Hart is a sad man who speaks with bravado and panache while existing in a psychological world of doomed hopefulness. He knows he is not the man he pretends to be, but he wants you to buy into his performance so he can keep existing in it a little bit longer.

One notable directing choice is that Hart becomes literally and figuratively smaller throughout the film. You do not notice his size while he is walking or on a bar stool, but when he moves down to a chair, is shorter than Rodgers, significantly shorter than Elizabeth (even sitting below her), and later on his hands and knees, it becomes exceptionally clear what he thinks of himself and what others think of him.

Staged like a three-act play from the first five minutes, most of the film takes place at Sardi’s. He moves from the bar to the stairway to the coat closet, but everything happens with a sense of colorful claustrophobia.

Ethan Hawke shines as Hart, with lengthy and flowery monologues, doing his best to keep the attention of the one other Sardi’s patron (a writer), and, later, Rodgers, then Elizabeth. He is a 47-year-old man who is sexually fluid, but currently has his sights set on the 20-year-old girl, much to the disbelief of the bartender who knows him.

One bit of dialogue from the bartender is, “Did you ever think our entire life is a play? 99% of the people got no lines, just like extras.” And this is the framing for the rest of the film, if you didn’t pick up on it beforehand. Hart is the star of this play with a few supporting characters, while others noticeably pass by as extras.

Runtime: 100 minutes

Motion Picture Rating: R

Languages Spoken In The Film: English

Should You Watch It? Yes

Did I Cry? Nope

My Rating: 4/5 Stars

Available: Free on Netflix, to rent on Prime Video, or may be available for free on other streaming platforms