Jack and I loved this story of a Brooklyn single father making music with his daughter, just as he's coping with her imminent departure for UCLA. Film Music Reporter calls it a musical comedy drama, which solves Jack's and my difference of opinion--he called it a comedy, I called it a dramedy.
Nick Offerman (last blogged for Nostalgia) finally gets to star, as Frank, the owner of Red Hook Records--just as it sounds, a vinyl store in Red Hook, Brooklyn. He's a music aficionado and just a wee bit eccentric. Daughter Sam (Kiersey Clemons, in these pages for Dope) is taking summer classes to get a head start on her pre-med program in California, and has eyes for an artist named Rose (Sasha Lane, who made her acting debut in American Honey). Offerman and Clemons play and sing everything live on camera and the tunes are terrific.
Frank's mother, played by Blythe Danner (she's been in two of the director's three previous features, most recently The Hero), is losing her marbles and keeps getting blithely picked up by police. Frank's friend/landlady at the record store, Leslie, is Toni Collette (last blogged for Tammy) and his best friend/bartender is Dave, played by Ted Danson (his movie work--Body Heat (1981), A Fine Mess (1986), 3 Men and a Baby (1987), Made in America (1993)--doesn't stand out to me as much as his TV--270 episodes of Cheers, 24 of Bored to Death, 10 of Fargo, 19 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and 26 of The Good Place, just to name the ones I'm familiar with).
One funny bit of trivia we were glad we knew ahead of time is that Dave's bar features a framed Playbill with an old photo of Dave/Danson in a play called Status Quo Vadis. Danson actually appeared in that very play on Broadway (which ran only one performance in 1973), playing a bartender. And, though we didn't recognize him, we spotted in the credits that musician Jeff Tweedy appears as himself and it must have been the guy in the record store in the third act who causes Frank to be speechless.
Director/co-writer Brett Haley and co-writer Marc Basch's last project was The Hero, which we also loved. They worked with composer Keegan DeWitt on The Hero as well. I've found three sites for the excellent music in this movie. There are a few spoilers in the text of the first link, which begins with a DeWitt's instrumental and is a nice backdrop to my writing. The next link, from spotify, has thirteen songs, mostly vocals from the movie and mostly DeWitt compositions. The third link, also from spotify has 20 songs, some by DeWitt, some by others. Imdb's soundtrack listing is useless, with only three. I forgot to count how many when the credits were rolling last week but did notice DeWitt credited separately for four original songs.
Rated 90% (yes!) by critics and 70 (wrong) by audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, this left our metro area a few days ago but is scheduled for DVD and streaming release in September. We think most of you will like it as much as we did.
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