2021 was hot with musicals. We had In the Heights, West Side Story, Tick, Tick…Boom among others. Cyrano is another musical that opened in limited release in 2021, and it was another huge win in the musical genre.

The story of Cyrano de Bergerac has been told many times, usually with Cyrano being shown with a large nose. This time, Cyrano is portrayed as a midget, and Cyrano is played by the ever excellent Peter Dinklage. I wondered if Peter Dinklage could sing. The answer to that was… basically. He handled the job well, and they gave him songs that kept his range in mind. Because of that, Dinklage sounded about as good as could be expected.

The story is very well known. Cyrano was secretly in love with longtime friend Roxanne (Haley Bennett), but Roxanne has fallen in love at first sight with a new member of the guard, Christian (Kelvin Harrison, Jr). However, Christian was not good with words and Roxanne wanted more than just looks. Christian gets Cyrano to help him by writing the letters for him and even speaking for him.

There is no doubt that Peter Dinklage is the reason to watch this movie. He is absolutely brilliant in this movie. He brought such confidence, and yet an underlying pain of doubt. Intelligent, yet unable to truly express his feelings as his own. The complicated performance was deep and compelling and truly deserving the Oscar nomination that he should have received (but didn’t).

I am not sure I loved the ending of the movie. There was one scene in particular that did not make any sense to me and seemed to throw the story in a different direction. Still, there was a lot of emotion and the Dinklage performance and the music made this worth the time.

3.75 stars