personification of Tom Hanks

Rating: 7/10 (8 June 2016)

It's 1964 Erie, Pennsylvania. Drummer Guy Patterson (Tom Everett Scott) chases flirtatious Tina Powers (Charlize Theron) and unhappily works at the family appliance store. Faye Dolan (Liv Tyler) is the girlfriend of Jimmy Mattingly (Johnathon Schaech) who leads a band with Lenny Haise (Steve Zahn), T. B. Player (Ethan Embry), and Chad (Giovanni Ribisi). They get Guy to join after Chad breaks his arm and come up with the name "Oneders" (supposedly pronounced Wonders). Guy's fast beats force the band to change their song "That Thing You Do" during a competition. The guys sign with manager Phil Horace living out of his camper. They go to Pittsburgh. Mr. White (Tom Hanks) signs them to Play-Tone Records and promptly changes the spelling of their name to The Wonders.
This is very much the personification of the Tom Hanks and his sunshine personality. It is fun, mostly happy, deliberately light even when the movie touches on darker issues, and has a catchy tune. It's good that the song is catchy because the movie plays it a lot. The visual is immaculately perky 60s. This is a happy Disney version of an one-hit-wonder rock group. The actors are beautiful. This is not to say this is a blindly perky film. It doesn't dig too deeply in the darker corners.