Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
New York City in the summertime isn’t for everyone. It’s easy to love an afternoon in Central Park, a ride on the Cyclone, or a splurge at a Mister Softee truck (swirled cone with a cherry dip, please!), but finding joy amid the sweltering temperatures and teeming crowds is no small feat.
To see a New York summer onscreen in In the Heights (opening in theaters and on HBO Max on June 10), however, you’d never know it wasn’t paradise. In director Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of the Tony-winning musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes (which tells the story of Usnavi, a Washington Heights bodega owner, and the friends and family who surround him, and features a cast that includes Anthony Ramos, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Corey Hawkins, and Jimmy Smits), the season in Upper Manhattan is a riot of singing, dancing, young love, big dreams, and one very eventful blackout.