Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Keira Knightley, Adam Levine
Down on his luck record producer and A & R man, Dan (Ruffalo) is fired from the record label he helped set up and looking to drown his sorrows, goes to a local bar where he witnesses a performance by Gretta (Knightley) the spotlight-avoiding songwriter girlfriend of a rising rock star (Levine). Spotting a bright new star in the making, Dan sets about trying to make Gretta his new project.
Upon its release in 2006, Once became a significant international hit for the Irish film industry. The tale of a Dublin busker and his relationship with an Eastern European immigrant, it got noticeable attention in America. Now, John Carney the director of Once has made Begin Again and it follows a similar path that its predecessor trod upon, almost as if the film started life as Carney remaking the film to appeal to a more mainstream Hollywood-centric audience who probably would've missed the more esoteric, European and lo-fi, Once.
However, Begin Again is not simply a repeat performance. Begin Again is rather more glammed-up, featuring a rather a-list cast. Mark Ruffalo, Marvel's latest Hulk, provides the lead alongside another major star in Keira Knightley. Even casual cinema-goers may recognise the supporting players of Catherine Keener and Hailee Steinfeld as Ruffalo's wife and daughter, respectively alongside James Corden and a couple of musicians in Cee Lo Green and Maroon Five frontman, Adam Levine.
Carney seems to be trying to have his cake and eat it with this film and, as expected, it only works to a point. Alongside the cast and the noticeably higher production values, the film sometimes loses this special little spark and tip-toes towards something a little faceless and actually rather bland. It's when the film falls back on the rough-hewn and "indie" sensibility that you actually get the film at its strongest. In a sense, this is the actual message of the film. The album that is produced during the film's plot is an album looking to use the ambience of New York City. Not the cosmopolitan martini-and-high-heels New York that Sex And The City was peddling, but the subways and back-alleys of New York. Somewhat gentrified from the city's notorious dark days of the 70's but a city with perhaps more personality with its slightly grubbier side. Ironically, that sensibility is lost the most in the sequences showing the songs being recorded.
Characters are not the film's main strength. Not so much that they lack personality; in fact the problem is the opposite. Mark Ruffalo's Dan is a flawed creature and is actually the best character in the film, especially in the early going but it's different for Keira Knightley's Gretta. This isn't a mark against Keira Knightley because it's her performance that saves Gretta from being a little too forcefully idealistic and falling into po-faced obnoxiousness. The film deals with interrelationships in a similarly uneven manner.
Ruffalo's relationship with his wife and teenage daughter is rather clichéd (he still wants to be with his wife, his daughter shuts him out and is going down a slightly troubled path) but the interplay between Knightley and Levine's characters changes in some interesting and original ways through the plot and the film, thankfully, avoids an uneasy prediction that she and Ruffalo may get together. Whilst I don't have the same dislike of James Corden that many seem to have, his part could've been fairly easily excised from the movie and serves little consequence beyond stringing plot points together.
As acting goes, this is a rather good film. As mentioned, Ruffalo and Knightley both do good jobs with Knightley performing her own singing (technically, she's okay but the style seems strangely ordinary given how ground-breaking it's supposed to sound) and there's not really a bad performance in the bunch even if Cee Lo Green doesn't get a chance to prove his acting chops but Adam Levine shows promise. Begin Again is, at heart, an inconsistent film but thankfully it does actually have something of a heart.
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