Sweet but light on substance

Rating: 6/10 (2 January 2017)

A man busks in a square in Dublin. By day he helps his father in a vacuum cleaner repair store and then spends his free time singing songs and playing guitar for tips. Most of the songs are his own compositions. Then he meets a young Czech woman who plays piano and writes her own songs. Musically, they are a perfect match. Romantically, there are impediments...
I wanted to like this more than I eventually did. The plot was sweet and had heaps of potential. However, there is actually very little in the way of plot development or substance in the movie. It is short - 80 minutes or so - and then a large portion of the movie is taken up by music. Not only does this leave not much left for drama, the songs halt any momentum in the plot.
In the end it felt like a short, padded with heaps of music.
The music, almost entirely written by the two lead actors - Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, is okay, generally. Some pretty good songs in there, some quite weak.
Good performances by Hansard and Irglova. There is a naturalness and sincerity to them, like watching a home movie, and the chemistry between them is spot-on. The rough-around-the-edges feel to the production helps too.
In the end, a bit disappointing as, with a bit more work and less padding, this could have been turned into a truly wonderful relationship drama. Hard to dislike though - it is sweet and the ending is quite emotional.