Life is what happens while you're busy making plans

Rating: 7/10 (15 May 2006)

The make-up department does a splendid job in ageing Richard Dreyfuss in Stepehen Herek's film about an aspiring composer turned music teacher who finds his vocation over thirty years. It's a good performance from Dreyfuss as well, and the movie also benefits from a reliably creepy turn from William Macy as Dreyfusss' boss. In fact, as a portrait of a life set against a changing political, and musical, landscape, showing how (in the words of a song that features in the plot), "life is what happens while we're busy making plans", it reminded me of the epic BBC drama series, 'Our Friends in the North'. But it lacks the deeper engagement of that series with the specifics of the times it portrays, and at times seems a little trite as a result. Dreyfuss was Oscar-nominated for his role and this is definitely the sort of film that gets considered at these awards: earnest, gently liberal, ultimately upbeat and essentially unthreatening. And you can take that as condemnation or commendation, as you will; but I enjoyed it.