Metacritic reviews

Howard does a fine, loving job tracing who he was as a gay Jewish boy growing up in Baltimore; as an aspiring playwright and theatrical impresario, schooled at Boston University, Goddard College in Vermont, the summer theater program at Tufts University, and a graduate student at Indiana University; and as a hungry young New York City transplant, eager to make his mark.

Most of all, this film is a tribute to the imagination and dedication that goes into the innumerable tiny decisions that make the difference between the beautifully drawn but listless "Black Cauldron," and the timeless, heartwarming appeal of the Ashman-era films.

There’s something exciting about a film that immerses you in the life of a creative artist, and so it proves with this documentary about Howard Ashman.

At 94 minutes, Howard is not and does not try to be a plumbing search through the generation of talent lost to HIV and AIDS; what it is trying to do, appealingly narrowly, is illuminate one life and the work done therein.

Blunt honesty and rare introspection sets Howard apart from the usual cut-and-paste trips down memory lane.

Howard feels like an in-memoriam tribute from a friend: made with a rosy sense of nostalgia, and perhaps a few too many photo montages, but with love.

By the end of Howard, it’s the songs we’ll never hear that may haunt us most.

Even for those outside of the Disney musical demographic, Howard is a moving portrait of an artist taken too soon during an era tragically marked by those kind of losses.

Mostly it will just make you hungry to revisit Ashman’s work. That’s perhaps not the intended result of this fond tribute/merely serviceable survey of a too-short career – but it’s not necessarily a bad one.

The Ashman story itself is the stuff of a Broadway musical. It just needed some music—what’s here is doled out in penurious and unsatisfying morsels.