The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. I attempted to read Be More Chill, the novel by Ned Vizzini that would later inspire this year’s viral musical. When I grow up, that had better be understood and I had better be compensated, or I’m going to shoot myself in the head.

Critics have commented on how shallow and easily manipulated the girls seem, and how little regard the boys show for the girls’ feelings. I myself adore musicals, so to know it was based off a book, brings me joy since it executed so well as a musical. Jeremy tells his parents about the squip (I like it but don’t like their immediate reaction of disbelief and therapy solution. When the squip suggests that Jeremy disrupt the musical and swear undying love to Christine, any idiot can see that it’s a terrible idea, but Jeremy does it anyway. The next morning, Jeremy is woken up to the news that Rich had burned down the house from the previous night and is in the hospital.Instead, I think that squips are awesome and Jeremy only got into his mess because he is a selfish, misogynistic jerk who let the squip encourage him to lean into his worst tendencies. I hope it does well on Broadway because it is a fun show, and Will Rolland is playing Jeremy, which I think will be great. Gr 9 Up—In this graphic adaptation of the 2004 YA novel (which spawned a cult musical), Jeremy, an unpopular teen with a crush on Christine, a castmate in his school play, decides to get a SQUIP, a brain implant that will help him "be more chill. By instructing him on everything from what to wear, to how to talk and walk, the squip transforms Jeremy from geek to the coolest guy in class. School Play: Jeremy and Christine are both in A Midsummer Night's Dream, performed at the climax of the book.

Despite this production only having a limited time run of 5 performances, it was very well received by Dutch audiences. Michael reveals he knew what SQUIP really were the entire time after his brother used an early version of the SQUIP to cheat on his SATs, only for it to drive him insane. Arifa Akbar of The Guardian said the production was "gloriously like its own thing, filled with astute observation alongside delightfully silly humour and storming performances. It featured Will Connolly as Jeremy, Eric William Morris as The SQUIP (an acronym for "Super Quantum Unit Intel Processor"), George Salazar as Michael, and Stephanie Hsu as Christine, as well as Katie Ladner, Lauren Marcus, Jake Boyd, Gerard Canonico, Katlyn Carlson, and Paul Whitty. On July 25, 2022, Be More Chill Japan began performances at the New National Theatre Playhouse in Tokyo.You might have been thinking - wait, wait, as YAF shouldn’t this book have ended with the boy realizing he’s better off as himself, without the aid of a microcomputer telling him exactly what to say? One morning this January, the artist Sabra Embury got an alarming private message from a stranger on social media.

Praised as "a high-energy, imaginative, well-crafted world premiere musical" in The Star-Ledger, Be More Chill was lauded as "a vibrant, inventive musical that makes the most of every moment and features an abundantly talented cast" [2] by BroadwayWorld. Like, there wasn’t some overarching message about being yourself or respecting women as people or not caring about popularity, and I feel like that would have been useful, especially in the book where Jeremy was just extremely ugh. The story isn't futuristic enough to engage today's teens, and the 2004 pop culture references may not connect.I figured that the combination of ‘interesting concept’ and ‘was made into a musical’ would add up to ‘book I will love. Like anything else, it can be misused and overused, but for someone using it responsibly, it’s pretty dang awesome.

Vizzini’s SQUIP is a Japanese bootleg that hasn’t been released in the US because of the potential safety hazards. Be More Chill (2004) by Ned Vizzini is a young adult novel about a teenage boy trying to increase his social status in high school.

Maybe he did see his story become a viral Internet sensation, in another world where he never jumped off a building. The worst thing that it does is tell Jeremy to blow off Michael, but when Jeremy makes it clear that’s not something he’s willing to do, the squip just kind of shrugs and is like, okay, whatever; makes my job harder, but fine. Another thing to note is that Jeremy's love interest is not as sexually active as other girls, and is often described to be different than the other girls he meets whom he respects very little, once again, enforcing the hypocritical view of sexuality between the genders.