"Sing Street" Review

Sing Street is a musical comedy-drama coming of age film directed and written by John Carney (Once, Begin Again), and starring Fredia Walsh-Peelo, Lucy Boynton, Jack Reynor, Aidan Gillen, and Don Wycherly. Distributed by the Irish Film Board, the film takes place in 1985 Dublin and centers on a troubled angsty young Irish teenager named Conor (Walsh-Peelo), who puts together a group of similar loser students to start a band in order to impress an enigmatic young model (Boynton). With the help of Conor's music junkie older brother (Reynor), they become Sing Street, writing songs in the styles of Duran Duran and The Cure to overcome the bullies and harsh rules of their Catholic prep school. The result is a sort of cross between School of Rock, Dope, and Moonrise Kingdom. And it's great.

I had a ton of fun with this movie, and it's unfortunate that it hasn't been released more widely, because it's one of the most unabashedly optimistic and uplifting films I've seen in recent years. It really is a perfect feel-good movie. It's not entirely wrought with poignancy or depth, but it embraces its cheery anti-authoritarianism and childlike drive with complete sincerity. And a good deal of the reason that that quality works to the movie's benefit is credited to its colorful and fun cast of characters.

The teenage performances in this film are terrific, with most of the band members given some considerable dimension and all of them given at least one chance to shine comedically. Much like the plot line, the characters aren't entirely original or groundbreaking and, curiously similar to the music of the titular band, borrows and apes off of the successes of the same general formulas of the sentimental coming of age works of the 1980s. Our main character is bullied, has family issues, and is misunderstood, unattractive (props to this movie, by the way, for casting actually unattractive kids and not "movie ugly" people), socially awkward, but plucky and driven. His crush is mysterious, alluring, and has a dark past of her own. His friends are variants on the spectrum of nerdy and silly, there's a bully whose penchant for abuse comes from his own history of receiving it, and the adults are mostly authoritarian, traditionalist, and uncompromising. We've seen most of this before, all the way down to the "running away together" plot device. But luckily, these characters are written and performed with such grounded sincerity and are so entertaining to watch that the film teeters closer to being a throwback than a rip-off.

My two favorite characters for sure, though, were the love interest Raphina and the older brother Brendan. I mentioned that this film plays its sappy 80s coming of age movie tropes well, and that's no better shown than in Raphina. Boynton's performance makes a character that is very easy to fall in love with. Brendan is sort of the Cameron Frye of the movie, being the snarky old soul with a soft spot due to his troubled relationship with his parents, and Jack Reynor gives what is in my opinion the best performance in the movie. Brendan's character introduces the film's best semblances of depth in his monologues about music and growing up, which cement Sing Street's love letter to the youthful power of music to connect, communicate, and to give adolescents the thrilling assurance that someone else in the world has the same feelings as them.

Ultimately, this is a film about the connection between music and love, and it presents this theme at its most youthful - naive, full of angst, and confused, but also innocent, pure, and honest. In a way, I think this is what makes the film's formuliac plot sort of work - its story and characters embrace the childlike and sentimental just as much as the main characters embrace those same qualities in their art, and both have really refreshing and endearing results. And the music is phenomenal - the reason I compare this film to Dope is that, like that movie, the in-movie band makes songs that I actually want to listen to outside of the context of liking the movie. The songs not only work well within the narrative, but are fun, jumpy, heartfelt, and perfect imitations of the era.

Overall, Sing Street is an eminently good time at the movies. It has only hints of depth, and its story has definitely been seen before, but it plays those familiar notes so well. The characters are entertaining and charming and played spectacularly, the music is catchy and fun, and the film reeks of a now archaic sweetness and blind optimism, with all its faults, that is honestly very refreshing to see in a modern film. If it's playing near you, I encourage you to check this film out. It deserves money.

Grade: A-