Bravo, Tom Hanks!

Rating: 7/10 (20 April 2011)

This movie doesn't so much have a plot as a trajectory. Nevertheless, it is better to see it yourself than to know where it is going. Suffice it to say that it is about a rock band, and how its members, friends and family respond to its success. As such, it is in the slice-of-life genre.
Given its nearly 2 and a half hour length on the directors cut that I saw, and recommend, it works remarkably well. After awhile, I wondered if something would happen, some disaster or twist of fate, some bad guy to thicken the plot, and noticed the movie was rather long. But I wasn't bored at all, and was enjoying seeing the story unfold. In the end, the length was just right.
Also, I am not a rock fan, so I was a bit skeptical. It didn't matter. In the wrong hands, this could have turned into Partridge Family cornball. But it is solid.
To all this, Tom Hanks deserves the credit as writer, director, and low- key star, who appears late in the movie. It's a first class job. Not an earth shaking masterpiece, but a well-crafted, thoroughly enjoyable movie.
I am a stickler for anachronisms in movies like this. This is a period piece set in Erie, Pennsylvania, circa 1964. The Sixties was a fluid time, where the culture changed every two years; 1964 was different from 1960, 1962, 1966 and 1968. The fact that one of the band members enlists in the Marines, without any mention of Vietnam, is a good measure of the mood and innocence of 1964, versus 1966, when the war had become politicized. America was at its best around this time, and it was all downhill from there.
The movie captured the spirit of this window of time. Tom Hanks was 8 at the time, so he could not rely solely on memory, and must have done some historical research to fully understand the period. Whoever was in charge of props did a fantastic job of assembling lots of appliances, radios, recording gear and lots of cars. This is a movie that got it right. I loved when Skitch handed out pocket transistor radios to everyone in the band - back then an AM radio would have cost about $10 to $15, very expensive at the time, about $50 or more in today's dollars.
The only anachronism I found was when Skitch tells a customer the appliance is available in avocado. Avocado was a notoriously common kitchen appliance color in the 1970s; I see it was introduced by GE in 1966, but became a tidal wave around 1968-1970. It was one of those fashion things, a late Dating Game chic, when all of a sudden everything was avocado green (or harvest gold), color coordinated so people could have an entire kitchen of avocado, lucky you!. And then avocado, predictably, disappeared. I found a post, "The Death of Avocado" that observed it was a mistake to put a trendy color on a long-life appliance, which looked obnoxious after coordinating avocado room decor disappeared. No kidding. I was just a kid at the time, but I could see that coming.
See how sensitive the cultural timeline is for the Sixties? Actually, I would say what most people think of as the Sixties began around 1963-64, with the Beatles and the period of this film, and lasted till Nixon's resignation in 1974 (although some place the beginning of change at 1959). After that, the years unfolded in a homogeneous miasma, distinguished mainly by the gradual introduction of new technology, like the VCR, the Walkman and cordless phone sizes.
That an appliance color was the only missed stitch in the movie indicates just how good it was!
The acting all round was excellent. There were no caricatures, even with the doorman at the LA hotel, who had some real depth to his role. And, although I read here there were pro musicians actually dubbing the music, the actors were totally convincing that they were the ones making the music.
"That Thing You Do" fits most closely the mold of "Breaking Away," which also featured a cast of talented young actors, and a skeptical, practical father representing the secure, dull path. Both are about life, dreams and fallibility. They both offer a lesson for young people. And in both, in the end, they turn a corner and life goes on.
This is an enjoyable, memorable and thoughtful film.