Enjoyable Movie

Rating: 8/10 (9 September 2003)

This was a very enjoyable movie that I can watch over and over again.
Tom Hanks did a wonderful job writing and directing this movie. I liked how he cast a bunch of unknown and semi-star actors at the time, with the exception of Liv Tyler and Chris Isaak. Obviously, he made some good choices as most have moved on to bigger and better things.
This was a wonderful story of a local "garage band" go from being unknown and rise to the top. I liked how you heard "That Thing You Do" evolve from a slow ballad, to a raw song with lots of potential, to the smash hit rock song that it became.
Another thing I liked was, there wasn't a lot of "name dropping" in the movie, in terms of other bands, artists, etc, with the exception of Virgil "Gus" Grissolm and Gina Lollobrigda. It would've been easy to do so, but it wasn't done and the writing was good in the sense that they seemed believable.
A few bits of trivia from this movie: Some things you already know and some maybe you don't.
-The bass player (Ethan Embry) was never given a name. In the movie, he's referred as "the bass player" and in the end credits his name is T.B. Player.
-Tom Hanks' wife and 2 of his kids appear in this movie. Rita Wilson played Marguerite, the cocktail waitress in the jazz club, his son Colin was the page who escorted Liv Tyler when the Wonders appeared on the Hollywood Showcase and his daughter Elizabeth was the bored girl in the dress shop.

-Is it a coincedence that 2 of the main characters in this movie, Lenny Haise and Jimmy Mattingly, had the same last names as Fred Haise and Ken Mattingly from Tom Hanks' previous movie "Apollo 13"?
-The record label in this movie, "Play Tone" records and the logo is the name of Tom Hanks' production company.