‘Sing Street’ will resonate with anyone who grew up on 80’s-era MTV

Either Irish writer/director John Carney is stuck in a rut or he’s found his groove. I can’t quite tell yet.

Carney burst on the movie scene in 2007 with “Once,” the brilliant, poignant, low-budget film about an Irish busker and his unlikely musical partnership with a young Czech immigrant. It won an Oscar for “Best Song” and spawned a Tony-award-winning musical.

His next film “Begin Again” was a bigger-budget effort with name stars (Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo) but also was about an unlikely musical partnership and featured another string of original songs. Although garnering another Best Song Oscar nomination, this sophomore effort paled in comparison to “Once.”

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He’s now out with his third film – “Sing Street” – and again, it’s a sweet, low-budget, music-based film, this time about teenagers forming a band during the tough economic times in 1985 Dublin.

Conor is a 14-year-old kid dealing with classic adolescent angst. He’s bullied at school, his parents are getting divorced, and he’s transfixed by a mysterious, older girl who hangs out near his school. One day he screws up his courage and introduces himself. He also tells her he is in a band. Conor, of course, doesn’t even have a band but he immediately sets out to form one with his older brother as his musical advisor.

“It’s all about the girl, isn’t it,” his brother asks.

“Yeah,” Conor responds.

The rest of the movie consists of Conor building a band, shooting videos, and wooing the girl in fits and starts.

And the brother’s mantra of “only original songs” not only holds true for Connor’s makeshift band but to director Carney’s movie aesthetic as well. Like his other films, “Sing Street” revolves around new songs written explicitly for the movie. Sure, they sound a lot like the music of the era – Duran Duran, the Cure, etc – but that’s the point. They’re loving knock-offs (rip-offs?), as any new tunes would no doubt be if composed by a band of 14 and 15-year-olds.

Because the 1980’s were the heyday of the music video, “Sing Street” has more fun sending up, in a loving way, the videos of the era.

One problem with Carney’s approach is that the band’s songs and videos all sound and look much better than they probably should for a bunch of musical newbies like Connor and his bandmates.

But then Carney wisely calculated that moviegoers would rather
listen to decent-sounding songs and watch more polished music videos than witness the authentic aesthetic output of 15-year-old kids.

All in all, “Sing Street” tells a rather slight and overly familiar story, but my hunch is that for anyone who grew up on 80’s-era MTV, like director John Carney himself did, it’ll have a resonance that rings true. Even if it isn’t.

Memory burnishes the truth pleasantly.