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Apr 18, 2016 By Charles Steinberg Web Exclusive

John Carney’s latest romantic dramedy set to song is a return to a contemporary model of cinematic musical that he’s making his trademark. After jumping the pond to New York for the charmer Begin Again, we’re taken back to the Irish neighborhoods of Once only this time a couple of decades prior, to 1985 and into the dynamics of working class family life in Dublin. Sing Street is Carney’s turn at the coming of age, teen dream story.

The principal patterns of premise are not all that different from any number of films of this ilk: an awkward boy is the new face in school, simultaneously gets bullied and makes new friends, becomes amorously infatuated with a girl out of his league and must display his special worth in order to win her over and away from the older guy who doesn’t really appreciate her the way he would. It’s a time honored set-up. In this case, our protagonist, Conor (newcomer Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) makes a bid for the heart of the fair Raphina (Lucy Boynton) by the most traditionally effective means of doing so, writing her songs.

To this end, the formation and development of Conor’s band drives the plot, providing a musical momentum that initially propels it. There are many kicks to be gotten out of watching Conor and gang figure out their identity under the critical direction of Conor’s older brother Brendan (Jack Raynor) and taking stylistic cues from the trending pop songs of the era by the likes of Duran Duran, Hall & Oates and M. One gets the sense of what it might have been like to sit in on the genesis of a beloved group of yesteryear and it’s interesting to see a signature being established in Carney’s filmmaking where dramatic narratives are fundamentally delivery platforms for pop songs to carry the messages and climactic flourishes of the story.

The strongest moments are undoubtedly the ones where the boys are playing the songs they’ve written together. This is how it should be, but where Once and Begin Again fleshed out more narrative dimension to complement the musical lean, the story line in Sing Street begins to drift a little too far towards secondary and lands in some lazy pitfalls of logical progression. The wonderful character and story building sequences in the beginning, where we are invited to cigarette passing, band planning clubhouse meet-ups, could have been given longer shrift but the shine falls more on the too predictably framed relationship between Conor and his muse, Raphina. Still a charismatic cast and good writing conveys the social milieu of the time and in the highlight sequences of band rehearsals, music video productions and shining performances, you get some of the same goose bumps you got when Jack Black tore it up with his prodigious students in School of Rock.

A little suspension of disbelief is called for to accept that these kids can play as well as they do at their tender ages but that is, after all, what the realm of cinema allows for. The sentimental imagery elicited by pop-rock balladry is manifest in the montages, and a great selection of 80’s gems for the soundtrack nicely counterbalances the vibe of the band’s original music. Sing Street is a pleasant enough detour into the innocent fantasy of youth.

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Author rating: 6.5/10