A feel-good moment for Ireland (and for us all)

Rating: 8/10 (14 January 2017)

Don't you hate those oversweetened soppy good stories that literally reek of fake? As if the movie creators thought they could really make us buy into all that positive sh!te they just made up without even trying to ground it into something realistic! Well, I certainly do. And it's my pleasure to announce that Sing Street had no single hint of that fake happiness, which makes it a rather unique case of a feel-good film that genuinely feels that way.
The story here is simple as hell and revolves around the things all the adolescents dream about: feeling love, finding your true self, breaking free of the confines of the house rules and societal prejudice. But how come Sing Street still feels like a breath of fresh sea breeze in the morning? From a rational standpoint, it's a mystery.
Mr Freud, whose face we could glimpse on several occasions in the film itself, might have an answer though. Feel-good movies don't feel too good because they are about people we (okay, most of us) actually failed to become. Failed to find that true love, or pursue our true destiny, failed to become what we've been dreaming to become. And seeing an artificially crafted cinema figure reach for its stars is less motivating as it's depressing.
But this time we don't have to choose between a starry path charted for and by someone else and our own less stellar reality. This time we've gotten our alter ego right there. A stoner, a school dropout, formally a typical loser... but who still gets some love from the movie, and for whom someone else's pursuit of a dream is not a source of jealousy but rather a moment of redemption and liberation, however small or past due. And for those who are already too expired to put their hopes into following Conor's path, Brendan is an alternative still positive enough to make us all smile, and this time actually feeling that it's a sincere smile.
My only complaint about this film is that, by making all the main characters so dashing and daring, it made them way too unrealistic. Ireland might be a birthplace for a lot of famous musicians, but passing the lyrics written by six(!) grown-up men for a 15 year-old's work is just way over the top. Being so fiercely brave and witty, both with enemies and love interests, and looking so shamelessly dazzling is what every kid has wet dreams of, but nobody ever had for real. So if the Sing Street members had been just several years older, it would've been much more natural. But, then again, the movie wouldn't have had that break-away vibe it bases itself on...
But these are the things we sacrifice for the greater good. And, at the end of the day, Sing Street is good because it made us believe in something for a moment. That no matter if you live your life in Ireland or in some other depressing sh!thole, no matter if you took an arrow in the knee or if the world's trying to screw you over right now, the steering wheel to your future is still in your hands. So ride it like you stole it! PS: the kids playing the band members are just unreal! I can't believe almost all of them don't even have an IMDb profile pic. And Mark McKenna who played Eamon... Dude, you're like Shia LaBeouf all over again, but without that Transformers stain he still can't wash off. Keep going like you do and you're golden!