"Sing Street" crafts a catchy Coming-of-Age tune

Okay, indulge this old fogie a moment of nostalgia - we all thought John Cusack holding that damn boombox over his head, blaring Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” outside of Ione Skye’s window in Say Anything… was so damn cool.  What better way for a guy of that age to let a girl with whom he’s incredibly smitten know that, despite not even knowing who he really is himself, he’s sure she’d be incredibly into him if she just gave him a chance.  

Most of us poor males have been there, or wish we had been: you’re young and you think the only way to get the attention of The Girl is to impress them with some talent or another, assuming you even have one.  Wouldn’t it be super if you could start a band?  Yeah, that would do it!  Problem is, your band would probably suck, cover songs don’t really impress girls, and nobody would show up for your gigs (assuming you could get any), but if you can just get her to see you play, just once, it would all be worth it.  Dream on, you poor adolescent schmuck...

Cut to the present - today’s youth may have been given their own version of John Cusack, and even though this one may be a bit more low-key than old Lloyd Dobler was, I believe 15-year old Conor Lawlor’s (newcomer Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) solution in Sing Street may be a bit ballsier. I mean, why stand there blasting someone else’s love song at The Girl when you can write a new one?  Conor does just that when he spots Raphina (a luminous Lucy Boynton), deciding the instant he sees her that he’ll impress her with the band he hasn’t even formed yet, fully confident the details will work themselves out.

This is the predicament in which Conor finds himself at the beginning of the latest film from writer/director John Carney (Once, Begin Again), a filmmaker who seems to be specializing in musical fables.  We first see Conor in his bedroom, plucking on his guitar as his parents argue outside, turning their shouts into jokey song lyrics.  It’s 1985 in Dublin, and Conor’s life is about to fall apart; not only are Mom and Dad on the verge of divorce, but hard economic times also force them to move Conor to a different, more hardscrabble (and free) school.  He has no friends (the campus bully even threatens him with a slingshot on the first day), no real prospects, and the cruel headmaster’s top priority seems to be the dress code.

Then he spots the mys-terious Raphina standing outside the schoolyard. All Conor knows about her is that she’s an aspiring model with an older boyfriend, but somehow, he has enough confidence to get her number under the pretense of having her appear in a music video for a band that doesn’t even exist yet.  With the assistance of 14-year old self-proclaimed “manager” Darren (Ben Carolan), Conor sets to it, rounding up a group of kindred spirits with an ease that strains believability. Sure, it’s total fantasy, but Carney executes this scenario, along with so many others throughout the movie, with such spirit and earnestness that one can’t help but be taken in by it.

Through a series of changing outfits and musical influences, the film charts Conor’s musical and personal growth, his compli-cated relationship with Raphina, and how he tries to keep an even keel kept on the home front.  In the absence of any meaningful parental guidance – his parents are peripheral figures in the story – his stoner older brother Brennan (Jack Reynor) provides musical education and some Miyagi-like wisdom (of a sort), and proves much more aware than his slacker appearance would suggest with gems like, “No woman can truly love a man who loves Phil Collins.”  Based on Carney’s own experiences as a boy in Dublin, the screenplay digs deeper than the usual universal love story to comment on Irish life in 1985 and sets it to a soundtrack that hits all the right notes for those with fond memories of The Cure, Joe Jackson and Elvis Costello.

The songs scattered about the soundtrack, many of which were written especially for the film, feel totally at home in the mid-80s time-frame (I dare you to hear the band’s first composition early in the film and not hear Duran Duran’s “Girls on Film” in the back of your head).  Carney himself co-wrote all the new compositions with veteran composer Gary Clark, and these tunes add so much to the old-fashioned and optimistic vibe that just exudes from the screen that I can’t imagine the movie working without them.

It’s the kids on screen that make the movie, though. Sing Street wonderfully communicates the exuber-ance and enthusiasm of its young cast, most of whom are non-actors, and the natural-ness of all their performances is an absolute wonder.  The chemistry that Walsh-Peelo and Boyton share would make the movie watchable on its own, but Mark McKenna’s performance as Conor’s songwriting partner Eamon matches theirs, and all of the youths in the band, even with smaller roles, deliver incredibly believable performances.

This movie actually brought some of that awful teen angst so many of us guys felt during those years of Swatch watches and Trapper Keepers crashing back to mind, yet it still made me smile and remember those years with fondness.  In my recent review of The Edge of Seventeen, I said that film was one which John Hughes would wish he’d have made were he still alive.  Sing Street could also fit that bill.

Cue Lloyd Dobler and that boombox now.

"The Edge of Seventeen" makes Teen Angst hip again

Movie “coming-of-age stories” are one of those tropes that many film fans just can’t seem to evolve beyond.  I admit I thought I had, but then I saw The Edge of Seventeen, and I have to admit that it seems the place in my heart John Hughes’ movies so effectively touched so many times is still there inside me.  The best of these flicks are capable of transporting we old farts back to a time of life that many of us now view through rose-colored glasses.  High school was never easy, with those four mid-teenage years representing a cauldron of raging hormones, exploding insecurity and academic pressure.  Not only has that not changed, I’m sure it’s even harder now than it was when I endured it.  It’s a wonder that anyone survives them.

With a smart, perceptive script from first-time director Kelly Fremon Craig and a wonderful lead perfor-mance by Hailee Steinfeld, The Edge of Seventeen re-minds us of the good, the bad, and the ugly of this life-phase through which we all must pass.  The movie gives Steinfeld a chance to equal her brilliant turn from 2010's True Grit, and she most certainly succeeds, portraying 17-year old Nadine, an 11th-grader who, in typical Molly Ringwald-fashion, can't seem to connect with people her own age.  To add insult to injury, she has only one best friend named Krista (played by Haley Lu Richardson), who through a late-teen version of a Series of Unfortunate Events, ends up falling for Nadine’s popular star-jock brother Darian (Blake Jenner).  Feeling a sense of betrayal only a teenaged girl could feel, and getting no sympathy from her seemingly bipolar mother (Kyra Sedgwick), she ends up going to one her teachers (Woody Harrelson), whose apparent lack of empathy is all the more hilarious because of its subtlety.

Oh, sure, there are other Sixteen Candles-ish tropes here, such as the borderline nerdy guy who in smitten by our heroine, but Nadine is so wrapped up in her own problems and superficial lust for another dreamboat that she can’t completely see it. Nadine’s actually kind of a brat (yep, that feels true to the age, too), but Steinfeld’s charisma and the script’s humor somehow make her misdirected rage and blundering attempts at independence endearing.  It reminds us of how the brave leaps and big stumbles every teen makes can sting, as she tries (we tried) to figure out how to be herself (ourselves).

The biggest key to the film’s success is that Fremon Craig’s script and direction don’t depend on slapstick to propel the story.  It also helps that the direction is conservative, not drowning the screenplay in references and teenage lingo (I’m looking at you, Juno).  Her script doesn’t adhere to the clichés, but softens them and makes them a bit more real and believable.  There’s a comfort in the familiarity on which a coming-of-age story such as this thrives, but that comfort is totally dependent on our being made to care for the characters, and I never got the impression that any of these kids were complete characitures, even when the story sort of demanded that they be one.

The ad campaign for the film touts it as the next The Breakfast Club or Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and while those compari-sons certainly aren’t off base, I think any conver-sation about this movie should be more about Hailee Steinfeld and how marvelous she is in this role. Of course, the rest of the cast are also quite good (being the old fart I am, I had no clue Blake Jenner was anything other than a reality-show joke -- I was floored at how good he is in this film), but this film is fueled by the central performance.  As Nadine comes to grips with everyone else moving on, with the whole world not being about her, she moves on from being a little annoying to completely sympathetic. Steinfeld handles this transition wonderfully.

It’s a shame a film such as The Edge of Seventeen is slapped with an R-rating, the justification for this be-ing a few “F”-bombs and sexual innuendoes, most of which are seen in larger quantities in other far-less meaningful PG-13 teen comedies.  I would hope parents could (and would) see this film with their teenagers.  Maybe the old fogies could be re-minded how difficult this time in their children’s lives might be, and the teens might see that there is hope they’ll survive the Hell of Adolescence.