Sing
Street will make you laugh and keep you entranced, but with melancholic
shifts, bits of horror, and wincing at the nitty-gritty of long-term
relationships.
Semi-autobiographical by the writer/director/producer John Carney (Once, Begin Again), it tells the story
of a teenager trying to find his identity and make his way in life despite
numerous obstacles. His parents
quarrel frequently, his mother is depressed, as is his older brother, and the
father is going through hard times financially. For that reason, he takes his younger son out of an
expensive school and enrolls him in public school. Conor (Walsh-Peelo) is bullied at his new school, not only
by a punk, but also by the head of school, Brother Baxter.
Serendipitously, a friend with ambition
appears, giving advice about how to deal with a bully, and when he finds out
Conor likes music and sings, he has the idea that the two of them should form a
band. They recruit successfully,
and give themselves the name Sing Street.
Conor’s bossy older brother Brendan (Reynor) coaches him by critiquing
the band and giving helpful advice like developing their own sound and making
videos. He can be pompous at
times, and revels in his pop-psychology pronouncements (He has a picture of
Freud on his wall.), but Conor is oblivious to the bluster, and takes Brendan’s
advice on his own terms. We get
it; music will be his salvation.
Much of the charm of this delightful film is
the apparent happenstance that occurs over and over again. For instance, Conor gazes across the
street one day and sees a beautiful brunette (Boynton) sitting on the front
steps. He develops an instant
crush, goes to talk to her, and when he finds out she is a model, he asks her
to be in his video. She is one
year older than he is—and much more experienced—but is charmed by his sincerity
and creativity, and decides his name should be ‘Cosmo’, a more suitable name
for someone in a band. She agrees
to be in the video, and when she arrives at the shoot, she is not only a hit
visually, but knows something about staging and costumes, which the band
needs. (This is all the
encouragement Conor needs to experiment with different “looks”, which he
borrows liberally from the rock music LP covers that his brother lends him.)
The rest of the story charts the ups and downs
of the band, the romance between Cosmo and Raphina, the gradual dissolution of
Conor’s family, and Brendan’s confessions of how he sees himself vis a vis his
brother. Sing Street has a
victorious concert towards the end when Cosmo roasts Brother Baxter with: “You wear a dress and tell me not to
wear brown shoes.” Carney is a
master at writing script; there are sage pronouncements sprinkled throughout
the movie.
Carney was interested in casting unknown
actors, so much of the cast is just that, except for Aiden Gillen (Game of Thrones, Calvary), Maria Doyle
Kennedy (Jupiter Ascending, 1,000 Times
Goodnight, Downton Abbey), and Jack Reynor (Macbeth, Doll House).
But Walsh-Peelo especially shows a great deal of talent in acting and
singing, and his buddies in the band (Ben Carolan, Mark McKenna, Percy
Chamburuka, Conor Hamilton, Ian Kenny, and Karl Rice) are firm back-ups. The 1980’s music is nostalgic (Duran
Duran, The Cure, The Jam, Hall & Oates), and Carney composed eight numbers
with Gary Clark that mesh nicely with the better-known works.
How the formation of a band solves
numerous adolescent challenges.
Grade: A By Donna
R. Copeland
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