Song One

Anne Hathaway is terrific, wonderful, and any other positive descriptives that you could dole at her.  She holds within her a great dexterity, charisma, and a charm that flows off the screen and infiltrates the hearts of the audience.  So, what the hell happened in Song One?

Hathaway is the protagonist in a movie that focuses on the intimacy of family and friends while being closely connected through the lifeblood of music.  She plays Franny, a young woman working towards her anthropology Ph.D., who has to return home when her idiot brother gets hit by a cab when he crosses the road before looking both ways while wearing headphones.  Digital Projection Darwin says, 'you have been selected!.'  The dullard is a busker who quit college to... well, to busk I guess.  He also has a creepy obsession with an indie musician named James Forester (Johnny Flynn). Dullard has posters of James Forester on his bedroom wall, and all sorts of doodles in his diary.  When I said it was creepy, I meant creepy.

Well, surprise, surprise.  Franny meets her brother's hero and a relationship ensues.  The relational chemestry between Hathaway and Flynn is about as dry as five saltines crammed into your mouth at once, with very little happening through either dialogue or action to create a dynamic of charm or ye old stomach butterflies.  This is one of the most frustrating aspects of Song One, as it would be quite a feat to get such a flat performance from Anne Hathaway.  It reminds me of what Zack Snyder accomplished in Man of Steel, when he took the vibrant Amy Adams and transformed her into a mere placeholder character.

This is the feature film directorial debut of Kate Barker-Froyland, who also penned the script.  The last thing I want to do is to write someone off immediately, so don't think that I am going to curse down brimstone and the like over this.  From the feel and tone of Song One, I get the sense that perhaps this was just not the story that she was meant to tell.

It comes from the aforementioned drab relationship, but also the lack of influence that the music actually has over the audience.  In the very first scene we are greeted with the dullard busking (moments before he fails to look both ways.  Always look both ways, kids!).  When he sings, there is a passion and drive that emanates from both his strumming and vocals.  And then he is in a hospital bed, and we are unfortunate enough to then hear the music of his obsession, the one and only James Forester.

Forester's music is without life.  It sounds generic.  It feels like it could have been written and performed by anyone, giving no sense of how it would turn him into an indie sensation.  There is nothing recognizable about his songs, other than the fact that he uses a loop pedal during the performance.

This is where I feel the script fails the film.  It appears that the loop pedal (used by many performers and buskers in much better ways) is what the audiences flip out over, one of the instances in the film where it appears that Barker-Froyland does not fully understand the moving components music.  Another example of the misunderstanding of music is when Hathaway's mother, played by the wonderful Mary Steenburgen, talks about how when she dated a famous rock star, he taught her one of the hardest songs ever to play on the guitar, Blackbird by the Beatles.  This is like me trying to sound smart about food and mentioning that spreadable (or sprayable) cheese is as good as the real thing.  Blackbird, be it a nice song, is actually extremely easy to play.

It may sound like I am taking the music aspect too seriously and that I am just being a curmudgeon because the songs are not my cup of tea.  I really am not being that.  There is just a major disconnect between what the director believes music to be and what it is to the audience.  If you watch the movie Begin Again, which I highly recommend you do, you will see a terrific example of how music is made to tell the tale and capture the emotions and journey of the main characters.

With the two major components of what we are supposed to connect to and become passionate about, the relationship and the music, existing without life, there is little more to say about this movie.  I could mention the sound editing, which cuts with every camera cut, leaving a jilting feeling to the audio with very little continuity, something that may be helpful in a film where sound is so important.  What was needed was a flow, was a beat to Song One, for it to feel like it was music being made before our eyes.  What it was in actuality was a poorly edited and curated mix-tape that misses out on the over abundance of talent that the actors possess.

Rating - 1 out of 4 stars