Movie Review - Sing Street

Sing Street (2016)

Starring Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Lucy Boynton, Jack Reynor, and Mark McKenna

Directed by John Carney

***This film is currently streaming via Netflix***

John Carney crafted one of my favorite movies of all time in Once -- a film filled with hauntingly beautiful music and achingly nuanced performances from two leads who'd never acted in films before.  Carney's music-centric follow-up Begin Again was a bit of a disappointment, failing to capture the magic and heart of his Academy Award-winning 2007 film.  Admittedly, because of the lackluster Begin Again, I was a bit hesitant to watch Sing Street, wary that writer-director Carney was a one-trick pony.  Fortunately, I'm incredibly pleased to report that Carney hasn't lost his touch as Sing Street is full of boisterous charm, cleverly inspired 1980s-style tunes, and joyously innocent performances from a cast of young folks.

With his parents' marriage falling apart, high schooler Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) is forced to leave his private school for a free all-boys state school run by the Catholic Church.  The quiet Conor finds it tough to fit in, being immediately bullied by a particularly nasty kid right off the bat.  One afternoon, though, he spots a lovely girl sitting on a stoop across from the school and he gets the nerve to go over to talk with her as a way of trying to impress the others in his class.  The girl -- Raphina (Lucy Boynton) -- is amused by Conor's charm, but she wants nothing to do with him until he mentions that he's in a band and needs a model to appear in a music video.  Despite normally wanting nothing to do with the boys at the school, Raphina is preparing to move to London to advance her career in modeling so she agrees to meet Conor and his band to take the gig in the music video.  The only problem -- Conor isn't in a band so the frantic search to find bandmates and create songs begins.

Set in 1985 Dublin, Sing Street is a charmingly pleasant coming-of-age film that just happens to have some great music added to the mix.  Writer Carney smartly doesn't try and make this film anything deeper than what it is -- two high school-aged kids in Conor and Raphina trying to figure out what to do with their lives.  The joyful exuberance that comes from Conor and his buddies' love of music pours out of every scene and leaves the viewer smiling from ear to ear.  The cast of unknowns -- to me, at least -- is winning and their wide-eyed innocence is believable.

Sing Street really is an ode to the 1980s showing its appreciation for both the music and cinema of that decade through lovingly crafted homages that feel natural as opposed to forced.  While quite different from the depressing (though fantastic) Once, John Carney is back on top of his game with Sing Street which deserved much more love from the public when it was released last summer.  (And how this film didn't get an Academy Award nomination for Best Song is beyond me.)

The RyMickey Rating: B+