While visually stunning, it can't get over the clunkiness.

For one, it is a musical. None of the previews warn of this, so the first random burst of song accompanied by bizarre interpretive dancing was unexpected and unwelcome. The modern and dissonant music doesn't fit, isn't well done, and wasn't a delightful surprise, but rather a "please stop."

The musical numbers begin to actively work against their own film when Christian, who is supposed to be the inept, mealy-mouthed, and tongue-tied love interest in desperate need of Cyrano's expertise... is the significantly better singer of the pair. Making it seem like Cyrano should be the one asking for vocal tips, and leave the sincere, if unflowery, Christian alone.

Then there is the mismatch of the 52 year old Dinklage pining after a woman who looks half is age, which leant an odd, paternal creepiness to their chemistry. Like he was the long time family friend/ uncle who now fancies himself in love with the (now-legal) girl he saw grow up. Bleck. Suspension of belief will not allow us to buy that these are similar-aged "childhood friends", like the script says. While an excellent and beautifully nuanced actor in this, Dinklage plays Cyrano as extraordinarily confident and bold. With Cyrano's crushing insecurity and signature self doubt missing, he just becomes creepier for the lack of apparent reason for his playing ventriloquist puppet master and meddling with a young girl's love life.

Finally: The very premise of Cyrano doesn't go well with modern audiences. When this happens, we either need to fully embrace and emerge ourselves in the historical origin, or update it to suit modern tastes. Cyrano fails to do either. It keeps its original, historical premise of Catfishing a woman into marriage and then the life of a nun with flowery poetry modern viewers don't see the appeal of, while continuously pulling us out of the past with the terrible, modern music.

What a waste of gorgeous costumes and glorious sets.

It feels like the fraternal twin of that terrible Russel Crowe "Les Mis".

Cringe.

Peter Dinklage is fantastic on this showing his emotions in every single scene just with his eyes (and words...) and Haley Bennett does also a very good job (especially in that final scene). The lighting, costumes and production design are all very good and the third act is quite better than the first two.

Now...this is a bad musical. Every time a song started, I rolled my eyes. This coming from someone who really likes In The Heights and thinks West Side Story is the best film of 2021. It's incredible how a musical can be so poor in...music! The songs are boring and every one sounds exactly like the other one, the dance is almost inexistent and the numbers very, very weak. Even the way the singing parts are used and how the voices are used...oh lord, sometimes I thought this was supposed to be a parody.

Joe Wright doesn't know how to film a musical at all - so, so many scenes with dull shots or static camera when it was asking for the opposite - and everything looks super forced. The plot is not great and is super convoluted, but I really think that if this was not a - bad - musical, this could have been a much more interesting view.

Cyrano has been turned into a musical with poor music and dull dialog. Peter Dinklage is the only bright spot in this movie. This version of the classic story has no heart and is a poor imposter of the original.