If you homogenized every beloved English film – The Full Monty to Love Actually, you’ve got Sing Street. Except there’s one problem….it’s not English….turns out, it’s Irish!
In this touching little engine-that-could, a boy, Connor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) from Dubin, decides to form a band in order to escape his parent’s pending divorce. Connor sits in his room at night strumming his guitar. When his mother and father scream, Connor puts the shouting of “If we didn’t share a mortgage I would leave you,” to music.
Connor becomes “Cosmo” – his stage name, enlisting a red-headed braces-wearing kid (reminiscent of Danny Bonaduce of ‘The Partridge Family’) to be the manager.
The two collect a few geeky students from their all-boy Catholic school. Soon you have a group expressing and channeling everyone from The Village People to John Lennon to Jimi Hendrix. Though Duran Duran is their hero. But all imitation aside, their damn good and their music stays with us. As an audience, we laugh at their 80s mesmerized adornment, only to realize it’s us that once tolerated and lived through that very decade least respected.
Running parallel to their music is the lovely Raphina (Lucy Boynton) a free-spirited model who lives in a girl’s home and has a dream of moving to London. She becomes their video girl and looks like Sheena Easton. When she takes off her make-up she’s soap and water gorgeous.
But the teen who steals the film is Connor’s older brother, Brendan (Jack Raynor) offering poetic wisdom and experience from his stoned world in the safety of his room. He once wanted to take the very risk his younger brother now lives for. Turns out, or so it seems, that the more an artist suffers, the more they create.
As the boys evolve into an expression of eye liner and dyed hair, we see that risking it all of a dream might just be worth it. Just don’t tell that to the Priest who runs their school.
Director and writer John Carney (Once, Begin Again) wins over audiences with this feel-good film Infused with soul, music and the right dose of comedy. This is the sleeper hit of the entire year!