If you are a professional critic, you will probably love it, if not, there is a good chance you will hate it

Rating: 5/10 (7 January 2014)

I love many of the Coen Brothers movies including Fargo, No Country for Old Men and A Serious Man. They all look like masterpieces compared to this movie.
I go to a movie to be entertained and this movie, except for the songs, had almost no entertainment value.
If a movie has both a bad story and bad acting, it generally gets bad reviews from the professional critics and nobody goes to see it.
If a movie has a bad story but good acting it might get good reviews for the acting, which for many professional reviewers overshadows the need for a good story and entertainment value.
To me there is almost no story, except to portray a person devoid of common sense who continues to pursue a dream of becoming a singer while his experiences say that dream is nothing more than a dream. Even when he appears to be heading for a real job as a seaman, his past mistakes in judgment make that very difficult to achieve. Thinking ahead is not part of his mentality.
I strongly recommend skipping this movie. Look on Metacritic.com for the user reviews. Currently they are 13 positive, 11 mixed, and 13 negative. But the critic's rating is 92 out of 100. In this case the users were much wiser than the critics.
If you want to see a good character study movie, with both a good story and excellent acting, go to see Nebraska. I am no fan of Bruce Dern, but he is outstanding in this movie and you will get your money's worth.