Music Review: 13 The Musical – Soundtrack from the Netflix Film

13 THE MUSICAL – Soundtrack from the Netflix Film (Ghostlight Records and Atlantic Records)

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

With the expansion of streaming services debuting their own original content, some of it tends to slip under the radar, not getting a big marketing push on launch and instead showing up gradually on users’ “Content you might like” sections.

It’s perhaps inevitable, then, that among such low-profile releases, there should occasionally be a musical that you would hope could get more attention than it eventually got.

One such musical is 13, a film adaptation of the musical that set records by becoming the first (and so far only) Broadway show with a cast and band composed entirely of teenagers. With a book by Dan Elish and Robert Horn and songs by Jason Robert Brown, Horn has written the screenplay for the adaptation, which drops some songs from the Broadway score and adds some new JRB compositions.

13 tells the story of 12-year-old New Yorker Evan Goldman (played in the film by newcomer Eli Golden) who, after his parents’ messy divorce, moves back with his mother to her Indiana home town just before his 13th birthday and Bar Mitzvah celebration.

The movie’s self-titled opening number sees Golden contemplate his landmark birthday while his life is in turmoil. It’s a fun song that immediately identifies itself as a classic Brown composition as well as establishing Evan’s worldview – less of an “I want” song, more a “Stop the world, I want to get off” number. The production is slick, brassy and punchy – like High School Musical at its height, but pitched a few years younger.

That’s followed on the album by the introduction of Gabriella Uhl as Patrice, Evan’s new next door neighbour, as she introduces him to her Indiana home town in the piano-led ‘The Lamest Place in the World’.

Then comes one of the film’s new songs, ‘I’ve Been Waiting’, which introduces some of the cool kids in the school that Evan tries to befriend. In particular, JD McCrary and Lindsey Blackwell take the lead as Brett and Kendra, who have been apart throughout the summer holidays and have been yearning for each other. There’s a delightful disco vibe here, with a song that feels bright, summery – and also self-contained, in the way that a great breakout song can be.

The cheerleader-inspired ‘Opportunity’, in which wannabe mean girl Lucy (Frankie McNellis) plots to try and get Brett for herself, has one of the catchiest hooks of the whole musical. Divorced of the visuals, though, the album version definitely loses a little. Still it’s better than ‘The Bloodmaster’, another new song for the film.

The plot is substantially the same – as a way of endearing himself to his new schoolmates so that they all turn up to his Bar Mitzvah party, Evan sets up a convoluted plan to get the whole gang into an R-rated film, while being blackmailed by Lucy to prevent Brett and Kendra from kissing at the film.

Convoluted as this plot is, and accompanied as it is by a song that, while humorous, is far from Brown’s usual high standards, it does at least streamline a number of plot strands to keep the pace of the plot going. And that means we get to ‘Getting Ready’ – another of the great original songs that survived the transition from stage to screen – all the quicker.

As Lucy prises her way between Kendra and Brett and takes the boy for her own, the boys of the school perform the 1960s doo-wop pastiche ‘Bad Bad News’. Once again, the movie musical’s production values work their magic – combining a singing style that’s three quarters of a century old with young teens talking about their small-but-vital problems sounds like it’s an effortless mix.

The movie’s third original song gives a voice to Evan’s mother, played in the film by Debra Messing. ‘It Would Be Funny’ sees parent and son lamenting their mutual bad luck and worse choices. Brown laces the pity party with lashings of his trademark wry humour, which helps disguise that it’s otherwise quite slight. In the film, this is the moment where Evan’s resolve changes, but listening to the album, you wouldn’t necessarily buy that.

In adapting the film, Horn compresses events further in this back half, with some side plots abandoned completely. That means we get two finale-like numbers – ‘Tell Her’ and ‘A Little More Homework to Do’ – in quick succession (although in the film, they’re separated by Evan’s Bar Mitzvah and Golden’s performance of the Haftorah, which doesn’t make the album).

And then, once those numbers see the cast resolve their difference and look to the future, we get the real finale number, ‘Brand New You’. It’s a real party anthem that both emphasises how well Evan’s 13th birthday party is going, and which leaves film viewers uplifted too.

The album then continues with a few additional tracks. An extended mix of ‘Getting Ready’ includes more plot points, which makes the audio make more sense but is reiterating stuff which the film illustrated in better ways. Still, it allows some of the minor characters a few more chances of exposure.

That’s followed by ‘What It Means to Be a Friend’, a number sung by Patrice in the stage musical that didn’t make it to the film. It’s sung charmingly by Uhl, and while one can understand that the film’s pacing renders it dramatically unnecessary, the album at least means that her hard work does not go unappreciated.

There’s also a version of ‘Tell Her’ sung by singer-songwriter Alec Benjamin. And while it demonstrates that the song works as a solo effort in addition to the ensemble form featured in the film, it’s also the weakest track on the album.

But by that point, it matters little. The 13 The Musical soundtrack is, at its heart, a slickly produced recording of one of Jason Robert Brown’s most fun musicals. The Broadway version of the show launched the professional careers of Ariana Grande and Dynasty actress Elizabeth Gillies, and one hopes that some of the young cast on this album go on to achieve similar success – particularly Eli Golden.

13 may not have the musical depth or emotional complexity that some of Brown’s better-known works do, but this middle school musical captures the angst that emotional upheaval at the start of teenage life can bring. And if you’re looking for the film adaptation of a stage musical about a teenager called Evan who makes some really dumb choices – of which, of course, there is more than one – at least this one has a cast that is age-appropriate.

Scott Matthewman