Sundance review: 'The Musical' is a cringe comedy about a middle-school teacher's revenge, but it's too cringey and not enough comedy

The contract a filmmaker signs with their audience when making a cringe comedy is a simple one: Be cringey, but be funny, too. It’s a pact that director Giselle Bonilla and screenwriter Alexander Heller break with “The Musical,” by leaning far too much in the cringe and shortchanging us on the funny.

Doug Liebowitz, played by the Tony-winning actor Will Brill, is a study in thwarted ambition. He’s an aspiring playwright, desperate to land a writing fellowship that will lift him from his small town, where he’s working as a middle-school drama teacher. Also, his girlfriend, Abigail (Gillian Jacobs), the school’s art teacher, broke up with him over the summer, and she tells him she’s now dating Michael Brady (Rob Lowe), their school’s smarmy principal.

When Michael declares that Cedarcrest Middle School is on the verge of making the state’s list of blue-ribbon schools, Doug sees his opportunity to exact his revenge. After announcing that he’s overseeing his drama kids in a production of “West Side Story,” an innocuous choice that Michael says is sure to impress the blue-ribbon judges, Doug secretly starts mounting an alternative: A musical he wrote about 9/11. 

Bonilla and Heller generate some caustic humor in the rehearsal scenes, as Doug manipulates his students into taking on this tasteless task and hiding it from parents, teachers and other students — while also navigating the plotting of his two wannabe stars, Lata (Melanie Herrera) and Cindy (Chyler Emery Stern), who overflow with toxic theater-kid energy.

With such a set-up, you’d expect the payoff to be worth the trouble — so it’s a sad irony that “The Musical” falls apart when it presents the actual musical. Done right, we would leave the theater laughing at the offensiveness and humming the tunes, like we’ve just seen the 21st century version of “Springtime for Hitler.” Unfortunately, Bonilla and Heller don’t deliver, and the stick of dynamite they’ve lit turns out to be a damp squib.

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’The Musical’

★★

Screening in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Not rated, but probably R for language and mature themes. Running time: 84 minutes.

The film screens again: Thursday, Jan. 29, 6 p.m., Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, Salt Lake City; Friday, Jan. 30, 9:30 p.m., Redstone Cinemas 4, Park City; Saturday, Jan. 31, 9 p.m., The Ray, Park City. Also screening on Sundance’s web portal, Thursday through Sunday, Jan. 29 to Feb. 1.