‘In The Heights:’ An Honest Review from an Afro-Latina

In The Heights is the nostalgic dream of a Washington Heights not everyone experienced. When you sit and feel the clave ping ping ping – pingping you feel the joy in your heart that this sound even made it to such a big screen. The hip movements and curly dark hair spinning on the television resembles the ones you recognize, but as the sun shines over their open arms and bright red lipstick smiles you realize you don’t really know what street they are standing on. For all the warm tender feelings In The Heights gives, there are missing shades, streets and “suenitos” deferred.  Eso es The film begins with a classic overture (I just want to preface this review comes from someone who grew up on musicals – but not a fan of musicals). The song bounces off the padded recording studio chanting “In The Heights!” I roll my eyes and then settle in – to give it a fighting chance. I mentioned I don’t like musicals so the first hurdle to jump over is the constant singing, but that is a personal preference so it’s easy to stay in the race. Then, the next is the story structure. Our main character Usnavi (Anthony Ramos) let’s us know he runs a bodega and has dreams of opening up his father’s store back in The Dominican Republic. There is heavy influence on the “suenito” or little dream. It started to sound very Disney, but then I remembered it’s a Broadway musical and chalk that up to musical fare. The story unfortunately does not get any further depth, instead it’s a myriad of interlo…