Review: Song One

A young busker named Henry (Ben Rosenfield) gets hit by a cab as he crosses the street. His sister Franny (Anne Hathaway), who has been living in Morocco to work on her thesis named "Nomadic Pastoralism and African History," returns home to New York to be by her comatose brother's side.

She's burdened with guilt - unsupportive of Henry's decision to drop out of college to pursue music full-time, she hasn't spoken to him in six months, not even listening to the samples of his music that he's been sending to her. In an effort to know and understand his world, she goes through his journal, using it as a guidebook, visiting his favourite haunts, and even bringing him pancakes from his beloved 4AM hangout diner in the hopes of rousing him awake.

When she discovers a ticket for a James Forester (Johnny Flynn) performance, she decides to give her brother's musical hero a listen, even approaching the indie rocker after the show to tell him of her brother's condition and to give him a CD of her brother's songs. She's pleasantly surprised the next day when James shows up at her brother's hospital room, and soon she and James are shuffling and mumbling their way into a romance set against the backdrop of the Williamsburg, Brooklyn music scene.

Song One features several songs written by indie duo Jenny Lewis and Jonathan Rice, along with an eclectic range of tunes from other artists - the whole tracklist is likely available for purchase and download, which may be a polite way of dissuading you from viewing this scantily plotted, assumingly unassuming, fundamentally weak movie that is bogged down by its own earnestness.

The film often comes off as one mopey ramble as Hathaway mopes by her brother's bedside, mopes in her bedroom, mopes at whatever bar she's plucked from Henry's journal, and then starts the cycle all over again. There's not much the actress can do here except calibrate her glistening eyes from sadness and worry to mooning and admiring. Flynn, of the band Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit, is called on to be a sensitive dreamboat, which strikes one as his default state. They're a fitfully charming pair. However, after last year's Begin Again, itself a riff on Once, how many more times can filmmakers dip into the two-lost-souls-brought-together-by-music well?

Writer-director Kate Barker-Froyland doesn't do much stylistically to differentiate Song One from its forebears, but does display solid visual instincts.

Song One

Directed by: Kate Barker-Froyland

Written by: Kate Barker-Froyland

Starring: Anne Hathaway, Johnny Flynn, Mary Steenburgen, Ben Rosenfield