Metacritic-Rezensionen

The unguarded authenticity of this film shifts its simple story away from any banality towards being a revealing narrative which celebrates the creative spirit and ponders the invisibility of Blackness.

In the end, Dandelion feels like one artist’s emotional prequel, leaving us wishing for even more.

The evocative visuals here sing in unison with the characters’ yearning to fulfill the promise of their lifelong dreams. They are chasing a glimmer of light before twilight.

Even with a shaky conclusion, the swarming warmth of Riegel’s direction and the meditation of her writing results in a film that displays the fleeting, volatile kind of love that forces you to grow - the kind the greatest songs are written about.

The story of a young singer-songwriter who’s stuck in a nowhere loop until she takes an impulsive leap, the feature is sometimes clunky but often quietly transporting.

In taking care to depict as much disappointment and frustration as heedless creative joy, the movie shunts some of Dandelion’s breakthroughs off-screen. It ends with a triumph that almost seems unaware of the degree to which Dandelion’s story hasn’t quite figured itself out.

When Dandelion is wholly inside her music — performing or composing or even idly picking out melodies while sitting beneath a city bridge — she carries her own magic hour inside her, and the refusal of the rest of the world to see it is what’s wearing her down. “Dandelion” is the story of how she gets her groove back, and only the star’s gift of presence keeps it from floating off on the breeze.

Layne's performance is a real strength, and she does a great job of not only anchoring us in her character's emotions, but embodying how she feels about singing in any given scene.

While Dandelion begins on a promising note and intermittently strikes the right chords, this cinematic symphony sours during its crescendo when it should be intensifying, bringing its stirring sentiments together in resounding harmony.

The story, alas, is colorless and flat: a terribly earnest picture of two sad people looking for somebody or something to jump-start their battery.