Keira Knightly shines, but otherwise it's a poor imitation of "Once"

Rating: 6/10 (14 July 2014)

This is a mixed bag - Keira Knightly, as always, brings a charisma and warmth that make almost any movie worth experiencing. Sadly, it is only her warmth and charms that kept this movie afloat through what was a lot of straining and over-efforting with pieces that did not quite succeed. The pieces were poorly done, and did not really fit together into a coherent and fluid narrative. The fails are three-fold:
1) The music. This might be just my taste, but I found it lame and flat. And rather than showing a mastery of music that takes us beneath the veneer of "pop" and commercial product we are continually sold, the writer displayed a shockingly superficial grasp of the art form. For example, when the Keira Knightly and Mark Ruffalo characters discuss the music that inspired their lives, instead of introducing us to a wonderful and delightful new paradigm of music we may not have been familiar with, all the script did was halfheartedly mention a few stiff and silly clichés.
2) Ruffalo's character's behavior was really just a clown show. A fine actor, he was given a series of set pieces as if from a TV movie - and was ACTING bits of the drunken has-been on the verge of rediscovering his family and his integrity and his career, rather than someone actually living that, or doing that. His over-wrought histrionics were, therefore, clownish - unconvincing. One was completely unmoved at those empty displays of "emote-by-the-numbers."
3) Hailee Steinfeld and Catherine Keener were both rather wasted. Hailee is a very young Oscar nominee with a bright future, but her character's story arc didn't go anywhere. Her character had no spark, nothing that really set her apart as anything specific or meaningful. Similarly the older but equally appealing Catherine Keener also didn't have much to do. Aside from expressing a few standard ex-wife and "mom" concerns (she played Hailee's mother), her character didn't do much in the story. Certainly in both cases both of the women were under-used. Both of those otherwise talented and brilliant female actors could just as easily have not been in this movie - and no one would have noticed their absence, their characters had such a teensy impact. And that is the fault of the writer/director, not the actors.
As the movie wound down to the final act I had an inkling that this was a limp attempt to rip-off the really great indie movie "Once." Except this did not have the spontaneity of "Once," nor the artistic musical sense of that movie. I was shocked to read, later that night, that this movie was written and directed by the same guy who did "Once." That is sad - he aimed for a repeat of his earlier success, but completely and utterly failed to capture any but the most superficial resemblance.
He would have been better to have steered clear of music and any other similarities to "Once," and made a movie about welding. Or beekeeping. Or something. It could only have been more interesting, more authentic, and more satisfying than this clunker.
Overall it was really a "4," but the otherwise talented cast made it a "5" (even though they bombed here), and Keira Knightly's good vibes made it a "6" (even though her movies are usually 10s).