Begin Again Review

First you get the music, then you get the sugar, then you get the women.

Considering all the changes the music industry has undergone in the past decade and a half, a film focusing on a music executive and his attempt to bring a new singer into the spotlight might be an excellent way to look at those changes. And if you wanna ignore that, cool. I'm sure this is a fantastic opportunity to utilize the talents of folks like Mark Ruffalo, Kiera Knightly and Hallie Steinfeld in a film that's exceptionally well written. That's that? The movie is a disappointing mixture of cliches and tediousness? Well now, ain't that a kick in the head.

All of the cast members of The Avengers are nicely showing up in a lot of artsy fare recently (Chris Evans in Snowpiercer, Robert Downey Jr. popped up in Chef and Scarlett Johansson has pretty much become the best actress in the world), but unfortunately, so it's nice to see Mark Ruffalo taking the lead role, music executive Dan Mulligan, in this project. Unfortunately, John Carney, who is in charge of both writing and directing this film, never gives him anything remarkable to do. Ruffalo manages to give lend some heft to even the most eye-rolling lines, but even he can only go so far.

Besides wasting Ruffalo, perhaps the biggest crime of this script is how its structured. The film opens with Knightleys character singing in a bar, and by the end of the song, Mulligan is standing in front of her, obviously approving of her tune. Then, we flashback to show how terrible life is for Mulligan, which eventually leads back to that bar where Knightley is singing. At which point...more flashbacks occur! Yep, not it's time to see what Knightleys character, named Gretta, is doing with her life. This structure isn't a problem on its own inherently, it's just that spending this much time with each character becomes pretty grating pretty quickly. I just couldn't care for any of them, no matter how many "dramatic" situations the scripts tosses at these two. By the time the story finally advanced past the bar Gretta was singing at, I was bored out of my skull.

I never expected for Kiera Knightley to be this good at singing, but I must say she is excellent at it. Music, thank God, is one of the films best assets, as Knightley proves more than capable of carrying a song, while Adam Levine (playing Grettas rock star ex-boyfriend) also brings many agreeable harmonies to life. None of the songs, except for the one that Gretta sings at that bar where she and Mulligan meet, are truly remarkable, but unlike the rest of the film, they at least kept my interest. The rest of the movie, sans a nicely entertaining scene with a character played by Cee-Lo Green (who really is a funny dude in his moments), only has any life in it's numerous inconsistencies. The most irritating involve Mulligan, whose financial troubles seem to be of no concern as soon as the plot moves into motion. The same scenario applies to his alcoholism, which bizarrely disappears after he meets Gretta. A scene towards the end where he remarks on his sobriety, and then downs a Pepsi, doesn't ring with victory, it just rings with sloppy screenwriting.

I wouldn't say Begin Again is awful, but admittedly it does toe the line on becoming "awful cinema" numerous times. The whole affair just oozes laziness, despite performances from Knightley and Ruffalo that don't show off the capabilities of the movie as much as it demonstrates how great those two are as actors. Unfortunately, the idea of confronting the ever-changing music industry is only glazed over in this movie, as is the idea of doing anything remotely interesting with its setting and characters.