Truly Dreadful Film

Good concept, poorly executed.

Best movie of this year hands down!

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Review: When I saw the box office takings for this movie, I really thought that there was a typing error but now I have seen it, I'm not surprised. The pace is really slow and nothing major happens in the film for ages. Its about a girl, Franny (Anne Hathaway) who has to travel home from India to be with her brother, who is in a coma after being in a car accident. She then moves in with her distant mum and she studies her brothers diary which explains his life as a busker. She then tracks his footsteps and goes to the clubs and bars that he has visited and she starts getting into the music that he listens to. Whilst going through his things, she finds a ticket to a concert of his favourite artist, James Forester (Johnny Flynn) so she goes to the concert to feel closer to her brother. She then gives Forester one of his demos, which he is quite impressed with and he goes to the hospital to meet up with her to pay his respects. From there, a relationship begins between the hot superstar Forester and the the grieving Franny who is hoping that her brother will wake up out of his coma. As Forester is leaving to play in different gigs around the world, they enjoy there brief time together before he hits the road again. I was hoping for a bit more from the movie but I personally found it quite boring and the performances weren't that great. Don't get me wrong, Hathaway showed great emotion throughout the movie, especially towards her brother who was in a coma through most of the movie but the whole project seemed cold and there just wasn't enough material to make it interesting. Johnny Flynn's character seemed distant through most of the movie and there wasn't much depth to his character. Anyway, I personally found the movie quite dull and depressing so it has to get the thumbs down from me. Disappointing!Round-Up: This is the first major movie release for the South African born Johnny Flynn, 32, so I can only comment on his performance in this movie, which wasn't that great. He seemed a bit dead behind the eyes most of the time and he kept on looking at people like they were speaking another language. He was quite an impressive guitar player/singer, especially when he mixed it up with the violin but there wasn't enough emotion from him as an actor. Anne Hathaway, 32, has the Intern with Robert DeNiro coming out later this year so I'm sure that she will put the disappointing box office takings for this movie behind her. In total, her movies have grossed over $2Billion, which include the Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar, Les Miserables, Alice in Wonderland, Brokeback Mountain and her famous role as Andy Sachs in the Devil Wears Prada so this mediocre movie can just go down as a bad day at the office. This is the first major release for director Kate Barker-Froyland so she's pretty new to the game. She done well when it came to the emotion aspect to the movie but for entertainment, it really failed. The corny love story took way too long to get going, even though it was predictable from the start and the ending was sketchy and badly put together. Anyway, the money that the film lost explains that it really isn't that great so I'm not the only one that found it pretty boring.Budget: $6million Worldwide Gross: $32,000 (Terrible)I recommend this movie to people who are into their emotional drama/music about a girl who travels home to be with her brother whose in a coma after a fatal car accident. 2/10

This movie tugs at all the right strings without straying too far from reality. You get to experience a relationship beginning while at the same time, experiencing the struggle and efforts of a family going through a tragedy that has an uncertain outcome. The only true disappointment I experienced while watching this movie, was not being able to come out on the other side feeling completely satisfied. For me personally, there are too few movies these days that give you a truly good feeling about where things end up. I feel that you could have taken a movie like this and still included details about Henry waking up and leaving us with a more stable vision of how his sister and James' relationship forges on. Meh! My two cents.

A pleasant if not especially memorable indie, Song One would have slipped completely under the radar and off the grid if not for Anne Hathaway, its star and producer. Hathaway's name alone - not to mention her singing chops, as demonstrated to Oscar-winning effect in Les Miserables - would have brought in audiences eager to hear her sing her heart and soul out again about the horrors of life and men. Here's the thing though: she doesn't sing (much), though her character does experience quite a few ups and downs where the men in her life are concerned. Instead, the film uses its frequent musical interludes to sketch out a sweet if rather underwhelming story of family, loss and connection.Franny (Hathaway) is working on her thesis in Morocco when she receives a call from her weeping mother, Karen (Mary Steenburgen) - Henry (Ben Rosenfield), the little brother she barely understands and had stopped speaking to after a fight, is in a coma after a car accident. Returning home to take up a vigil at Henry's bedside, Franny tries to connect with her brother through the music and musicians he loves. As she retraces the path of her brother's life through tiny hole-in-the- wall clubs across New York City, she meets and finds herself drawing closer to James Forrester (Johnny Flynn), Henry's favourite indie musician.You can't fault writer-director Kate Barker-Froyland for ambition. She blends three story lines, each capable of carrying its own film, into Song One - there's the heartwrenching family drama about how people must try to survive when death hovers nearby; a quirky romantic comedy about two unlikely souls finding each other; and a brooding treatise on the vagaries of the indie music industry. She mixes and mashes up the ideas and concepts reasonably well, as Henry's coma prompts his sister to explore a world composed of song and lyric - one in which she previously had no interest.The first half of the film is grittier and grimmer in tone, buoyed by a pair of sad, weary and very truthful performances from Hathaway and Steenburgen - mother and daughter smarting at the thought of losing Henry, while pushing each other away with all the love in their hearts. The unexpected friendship that Franny develops with James also begins in a charmingly bittersweet fashion - he turns up out of the blue to strum his guitar at Henry's bedside, providing the soundtrack to Franny's desperate pleas for her brother to wake up.But Song One unravels a little as it goes on. Gritty gives way to predictable, and it's hard to care as much when the family tragedy takes a backseat to the unfolding romance between Franny and James. This shift in focus isn't helped by the fact that Flynn, who possesses a good singing voice, is a slightly blank presence on screen - he's never outright bad, but it's hard to glean much of James' supposedly sensitive soul from his performance, forcing his words or music to do the job.Speaking of the music: the score and original songs by indie rock duo Jenny & Johnny are amiable enough - they've evocative, in parts, but never so catchy as to be really memorable. The exceptions are Afraid Of Heights, a cute little improvised ditty that nicely sums up the relationship between Franny and James; Silver Song, a heartfelt number that ties itself in quite effective, heartbreaking fashion into the narrative; and Little Yellow Dress, which sports lyrics so strange that the song threatens to jolt viewers right out of the film.Like the deeply earnest clutch of indie songs that form its soundtrack, Song One is a largely pleasant, if not entirely pleasing, experience. The film hints at depth and layers that don't quite bear up under scrutiny. At least Barker-Froyland doesn't descend completely into mawkish predictability in the final frames, instead bringing the film to a close on a sweetly tentative note that could hold as much grief as hope. It's an ending (or, perhaps, a beginning) that makes the entire journey worth it - almost.

How do you spell "Relief"? S-o-n-g-O-n-e! Finally... a movie that knows how to be refreshingly real and not afraid to use it. Life is fragile. I don't know of anyone who hasn't experienced an event that changed their world in an instant. The movie's characters and story drew me in from beginning to end. What's not to love about Anne Hathaway as she struggles to let go and understand her brother's world rather than that of strangers in faraway places? As Franny re-discovers her own love and appreciation for the talent, passion and struggles of musicians, so do I! Johnny Flynn? A truly amazing performance as a sensitive, sometimes awkward and insecure artist whose voice and poetry speaks from his heart to all who listen. Song One is a movie that will not be forgotten by it's viewers. Unless you are an unfortunate soul in a coma, your senses will be heightened as well as your sensitivity and connection to the realities of life.