Though Clark's perspective (played by Eddie Redmayne) is necessarily the filter through which to see Monroe, he comes off too much the earnest young gofer, and the movie feels downright Disney at times as a result.
Both songs and dances are performed by just five actors, and the result is exquisite, with the music preventing the whole performance from veering too much into the earnest and the sombre.
He reminds me a little too much of Josh Earnest with his 'smartest guy in the room' psychology.
So, before we give too much credence to earnest promises by leaders in Washington, it might be useful to recall how we got wedged into this precarious corner.
It's a lamentable and creepy record and we hear far too much of it, including the interminably earnest and, yes, really long, title track where we're told "We're riding to Utopia/ Road map says we'll be arriving soon", and "Guilty of the Crime", which features the sinister lyric "I'm a stranger knocking on your door/No need to worry about the way I was before".
While anyone who's had the pleasure of a Sunday evening dancing in the company of Janson throughout his Panorama Bar residency (or elsewhere), will surely think he doth protest too much, in an industry awash in earnest, self-serious philosophy, the passionate but tongue-in-cheek approach established by TCK allows the music to speak for itself.
All this earnest jive about making "Earnest" more relevant sounds like everyone is protesting too much.
That didn't keep her from sending up Susan Mary in her novels as an over-earnest American (Mildred Jungfleisch) who talked too much about politics.
Critics lament and the earnest gripe whenever affluent women are portrayed doing too much shopping and not enough deposition taking, but a minstrelsy of working-class life goes on, eliciting few remarks.
