Bravely tackling taboos head on …but falling flat
Unless you’re a fan of TV’s Parks And Recreation you’re more likely to recognise Nick Offerman’s deep, gravelly voice from the many cartoon franchises he’s lent it to, than his actual face but that might change in the wake of Hearts Beat Loud (12A) ★★★★. Goodness, it’s a lovely film – short on anything resembling actual realism, long on life-affirming joy and guaranteed to send anyone with a heart out with a soppy smile on their face.
In a film that is one part Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, one part any of the wonderful music-driven films made by John Carney (Once, Begin Again, Sing Street), Offerman plays Frank Fisher, a middleaged widower running a failing Brooklyn vinyl record shop whose only daughter, Sam (Kiersey Clemons), is off to medical school in September. The music-loving father and daughter have one last summer together.
So what do they do? They jam together, record a track or two, catch the songwriting bug… and suddenly they’re a band.
This is a film about first chances and second chances, first loves and later loves, but mainly it’s about the transformative impact of making music. A delicious bonus is Ted Danson being quietly brilliant in a supporting cast that also includes an onform Toni Collette and Blythe Danner. Full marks to writerdirector Dominic Savage and to actorproducer Gemma Arterton for confronting one of the great taboos of modern life – the mother who doesn’t like being a mother; or a wife for that matter. Alas, however, in The Escape (15A)★★ their execution lets them down, with the structure and pace of Savage’s screenplay trying the patience and Dominic Cooper (above, with Arterton) struggling to convince as the husband.
Spy thriller Damascus Cover (15A) ★★ provides a far-from-fitting sendoff for the late John Hurt. Not that there’s anything wrong with the great man’s brief cameo turn as an ageing Mossad chief; it’s the clunky screenplay that does the damage. Jonathan Rhys Meyers’s (left) performance wasn’t his best day at the office either.
You might think that The Lego Batman Movie had already spoofed the superhero universe enough. But apparently not, for now along comes Teen Titans Go! To The Movies (PG)
★★★, spun off from the children’s cartoon TV series, to do something very similar. There is some sporadically clever fun to be had but not enough to make it essential.