It’s been a little while since I’ve seen a concert type film. This one does a good job of keeping the music front and center for the experience. You might be worried that the drama will overtake the music but that never happens in this case. You’ve got quite a few characters walking around and while the leads may not be the most likable, for the most part they aren’t terrible people either. Some are definitely better than others though.

The film starts out by introducing us to Guy who works at his father’s appliance store. His real passion is in music but he has to make ends meet. One day, a local band loses a member when he breaks his arm so they go to recruit Guy. Guy can’t pass up this opportunity and the group performs better than usual. This is actually due to Guy messing up the song and playing a lot quicker than the normal tempo. It was a fortunate mistake because the group become local celebrities over night. Their fame continues to grow as they are even signed by a big time company. Will this fame end up corrupting the group? Sometimes when fame hits this quickly, it has a tendency to tear folks apart.

For most of the movie the group is actually fine though. What you see are the cracks that begin to form. Jimmy is a little reluctant about all of these opportunities from the start after all. He feels like this is not following his artistic vision and does a lot of complaining. Even when they are filming a commercial for a big budget movie, he is still upset the whole time. There is no real pleasing him as he only wants to create records.

Jimmy is big on being a musician so it’s fine that he wants to make more music but it does feel like he’s taking the other opportunities for granted. Even nowadays it feels like musicians have to do a lot of things beyond just making music if they want to remain relevant for long. He needed to play ball more but things really escalate when his romance plot doesn’t go well. He was dating Faye for over 2 years but was apparently not planning on taking things further.

That always feels like a waste of time though. Why date someone for a long period of time when you’re not planning to get married in the end? I don’t think you should even date anyone if you’ve crossed off the idea of marriage. Obviously you can’t really know how things will end when you first start dating but the door should be open to the possibility. Then if that door closes at any point, you’ve gotta end things as quickly as possible. In this film it may have been one way but even if you have a relationship where both people are just in it for kicks, it’s going to be a bad idea. It just makes the whole thing futile and pointless.

Meanwhile for Faye, it was definitely a tough situation for her. She thought that things were going well the whole time and didn’t notice that Jimmy had withdrawn. I wouldn’t really put any fault on her there because it’s incredibly hard to discern that. In a way you never truly know another person so those kinds of twists and changes will usually be unexpected. I will say that I do judge her a bit on the rebound though. After a big relationship like that, you really need to just wait for a while before getting right back into the hunt. Rebounds in general are never a good idea because you’re running on pure emotion by that point.

As for our lead Guy, well he doesn’t do too well at the romance game either. He seems distracted by girls initially but his main passion is music. So he naturally needs to be with someone who is really interested in the business. Otherwise those relationships aren’t going to work. If he has fully picked music, then there’s nothing wrong with that, but he should know his limits and not pursue other things. He was always a good sport about tackling all of the musical gigs and leading the group though. When it comes to the band, he was second to none.

Then we have Lenny who mainly serves as the goofball of the group. He is always running around and causing a stir. He’s really good at being in the band but he really wants a girlfriend already. He spends his off hours always looking for one and flirting with everybody. That’s not usually a good sign for a long term relationship so how his plot ends is not really going to be a surprise to anybody. He worked well for the dynamic and seems like a decent friend but he’s not going to be the guy you can count on.

Finally we have Mr. White who was a really good manager. He clearly knew his stuff and pushed the group to succeed. He deserves a lot of credit because he kept it real with each of the members the whole time. Mr. White was cordial and treated them all like professionals while keeping up his boundaries. When Jimmy crashes out, White calmly reminds him of the contract and pushes forward from there. I was glad that he didn’t retreat at all. He’s seen this many times after all so this is just business as usual. You always want to have a boss like that.

The main song gets played a lot so you definitely hope that it’s a good one. I thought that it was reasonably catchy. It’s not exactly the kind of tune that I would be listening to but I wouldn’t be in a hurry to turn it off if it happened to be on the radio. The song is basically passable is what I’d say and that’s not a bad position to be in.

This film mainly excels with the good dynamic between the main characters. They all get along well and it’s nice to see them succeed even if I may not love any of them as individual characters. You do end up feeling bad for the original member who broke his arm though. We see that he got a job at the appliance store but he really missed out on what would have been a fun adventure all because of a little accident. That’s about as tragic as it gets.

Overall, This film shows that the life of a band can be really glorious but also incredibly short lived. It’s not the kind of gig that tends to go on forever after all. You have to enjoy it while you can and then go from there. You hope that the characters saved up enough money to be set for the rest of their lives although we do get epilogue notes for each of the characters. If you like a classic story about bands and enjoy the atmosphere then you’ll certainly enjoy the film. It does a good job of exploring that environment.

Overall 6/10