Hearts Beat Loud

Feel good movies are pretty rare these days - you mean it isn't a comic book movie, mainstream comedy, or Oscar contender? This movie is none of those things. It is just a simple story about a dad, a daughter, and a record store. You know the whole plot just by watching the trailer, honestly...but you should watch it anyway. Offerman and Clemons absolutely shine. They manage to make this story feel real without ever becoming cliche. If you are not smiling in the closing scenes, if you are not thinking back to your own farewells, well, something might be wrong with you. It will not give you chills. It is not groundbreaking. It has some plot gaps. But it is a feel good movie. And I felt good.

This has 'nice movie' written all over it. And there's nothing wrong with that if that's what you're looking for.

Initially put this on as background noise, but it wasn't too long before I was paying attention and then 100% invested in its story.

Nick Offerman is a far cry from his Park & Rec. days and all the better for it. And Ted Danson's little role didn't hurt either.

The music, although very good, wasn't my bag. And Kiersey Clemons playing a late teen just didn't appeal to me.

Music and film have always had a tender chemistry, and independent cinema has-as of the last decade at least-also had a strong interest in examining relationships through music (think "Once" and some of the films it inspired). In "Hearts Beat Loud," filmmaker Brett Haley widens that focus from romantic relationships to interfamily ones, in this case between a father and daughter.

The film's greatest strength is its depiction of the song creation process. Not the nuts and bolts, but the vulnerability of creation and sharing, and its precisely that act of emotional exposure that allows Frank (Nick Offerman) and Sam (Kiersey Clemons) to connect despite their inability to speak their emotions directly. The film feels most alive in its musical moments thanks to strong editing, and Haley and his co-writer Marc Basch succeed most at showing how music creation provides them each their own needed release as well as a shared catharsis.

Story-wise, Haley and Basch keep it simple. Sam is a majorly smart kid taking pre-med classes her summer before attending Stanford. Paying her tuition is a big piece of why single dad Frank is going to close his Red Hook-based record store. After Frank nudges her to jam with him, he posts their track to Spotify and it gets attention-much to Frank's delight and Sam's chagrin. Meanwhile, Sam's found her first love (Sasha Lane) and Frank is trying to figure out what's next, with some nudging from his landlady (Toni Collette).

All this to say, the conflict in the movie is mostly interpersonal. It's a lot of moments of connection and discovery (mostly through music). Not much happens in the way of surprises. Instead, Haley steers well wide of melodrama, creating a low-key, contemplative vibe. Consequently, the music scenes, featuring interesting, layered alternative pop music by Keegan DeWitt, feel like the movie's action sequences. All the music is also performed on set, and that kind of authenticity proves critical in a film this intimate.

Whether it's Offerman preforming a song that's not as musically tight or the authentic breaks in Clemons' voice in which you can tell she's belting out the words as best she can, most films don't expose themselves or their performers musically in this way, but there aren't the same expectations of performance that you have with a movie-musical. We also get sequences that play like music videos, such as when Frank picks up the guitar out of pure need to make music, which is cut with Sam taking a big risk for the first time. It's a beautiful weaving together of two different responses to the same emotional stimulus, reminding us that music is about something deeper.

"Hearts Beat Loud" will give viewers more of a mellow musical buzz than a rush of music-driven emotion, but in the movie musical's typical tightrope walk between authenticity and clichéd whimsy, so often filmmakers fall to the larger-than-life side, and "Hearts Beat Loud" is a nice counterbalance.

~Steven C

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I managed to catch this at a screening at the Edinburgh Film Festival. It was one of those bookings I took a risk on and knew very little about it apart from the fact Nick Offerman was the lead. Firstly this is a family focused feel good movie with a musical theme. If that doesn't sound like your thing then its not for you. We have Nick Offerman looking like an angry old owl who is a widower and has a musically talented daughter, Sam played by Kiersey Clemons. Sam is preparing to leave for medical school and her father is featuring less in her life as a result. The father and daughter make music together for fun, hence the musical content of the movie. Sam has also just started a same sex relationship with an artist, so we have a three way love tug of war centring on whether the daughter will leave her new love and father behind, just when the family band have a possibility of commercial success. That is all you need to know without giving any spoilers. What I did find interesting and authentic was the fact that they paid a fair bit of attention to the music making process, which as someone who is interested in this kind of thing is a bonus. We see them use MIDI keyboards, effects pedals on guitars and what also must be the first time Abelton Live and Push have been featured in a movie. Which is interesting in itself as the style of music played is not really the electronic kinds you would associate with Laptop driven music. The weaknesses I found in the story were funnily enough around the use of the internet, the main character is savvy enough to record and supposedly master (we never see this process) then upload his music to Spotify, but hasn't cottoned on to the fact he could be selling his music stock online as well? The music featured in the movie is basically Eno-esque indy pop by the family band with a bunch of other guitary indy type fodder. How much the music means to you will be down to your own tastes but music does feature heavily especially towards the finale. However as a feel good movie it definitely hits the mark and at no point during the movie did I feel a cringe or feel the story was becoming too sentimental, which is usually the case with these types of movies. This is an easy to watch movie and a rare exploration of the father daughter dynamic within a mixed race family over a shared love of music.

For a movie that has a lot on the platter, "Hearts Beat Loud" traverses what foreshadows to be rough waters with a calm, realistic paddle. It has the squeaky clean, educational discovery flavour of the "ABC Afterschool Specials" of TV past, without veering towards any convenient conclusions. The movie just plays out, which as it turns out, is part of its refreshing charm.

"Hearts" works best when focusing on the father-daughter dynamic which is the film's core, keying on Nick Offerman's perfectly understated role facing a personal crossroads struggle. Inserting veteran, recognizable faces Ted Danson and Blythe Danner proves distracting, as is the stilted Jeff Tweedy (Wilco) cameo. Confusing decisions for a film that aches to be small. Smartly, these are but brief interruptions and melt quickly into the background. This is a father film. Period.

As Frank, the judgemental owner of a struggling vinyl record shop, and a single parent to an itchy yet whip ass smart teen, Offerman brings a calm yet burning restraint when faced with major life decisions. His usual poker face satire stance from a wonderful comedic career, being replaced with a surprisingly dramatic nuanced one.

The movie lingers a tad too long on some pieces (warning: there is plenty of music, plus plenty of nerdy music references), and leaves much unresolved, but that just might be the point of delivering this sweet slice of casual life. Hearts actually beat soft.

• hipCRANK