Wonderfully watchable
Cravalho’s fantastic voice lights up new Netflix drama All Together Now
Most movies feature some version of good versus evil. Sometimes the canvas is small — Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow pits a couple of amateur pastry chefs against a rich guy with the only cow in Oregon, circa 1820. Others go large — the Marvel franchise, say, or Star Wars.
Then there’s All Together Now. On the one hand we have Amber Appleton (Moana’s Auli’i Cravalho), as wholesome as her name and twice as nice. She even sings like an angel.
Amber volunteers at the old age home, where she plays chess with the crotchety Joan (Carol Burnett in a winsome cameo). At school, she runs the fundraising talent show and also coaches a group of elderly Chinese ladies in song. Her circle of friends could be a poster for diversity and inclusion. She has a virginal crush on buddy Ty (Rhenzy Feliz). And her homeroom teacher is Fred Armisen!
But the universe — or rather screenwriters Marc Basch and Brett Haley, adapting Matthew Quick’s novel Sorta Like a Rock Star — seems to be conspiring against her. She’s semi-homeless and broke, living in a school bus with her mom (Justina Machado), who’s dealing with alcoholism and an abusive boyfriend.
She scores an audition at Carnegie Mellon, but money problems, veterinarian bills and life in general contrive to stop her. And she refuses to accept a whit of help from anyone, even surrogate mom Donna (Judy Reyes).
They say that pride goeth before a fall, and All Together Now seems intent on seeing just how close Amber can goeth to the edge of the cliff before dragging her back to safety. Or perhaps she goeth over? I’m not, er, goeth-ing to spoil the ending, except to say that it involves some kind of tears.
What I can say is that Cravalho plays a wonderful, watchable character with a fantastic singing voice, even though you may grit your teeth at her stubbornness. And that director Haley, who made the similarly crowd-pleasing musical comedy Hearts Beat Loud, makes very certain that we know good from evil, and which deserves our applause. cknight@postmedia.com