Fresh off her Oscar winning performance and infamous on screen haircut in Les Miserables, Anne Hathaway stars in this infinitely smaller film from writer/director Kate Barker-Froyland. A Sundance Film Festival entry, the movie winds through the clubs, coffee shops and second hand stores that make up the indie music scene in northern Brooklyn.
Ben Rosenfield ("Boardwalk Empire") plays Henry, the kind of musician so enamored with his own folk sound that he is willing to play for pocket change in the subway tunnels. Failing to adhere to mother rule #1, Henry pays the price for not looking both ways prior to crossing a street in front of a New York cabbie. Next thing we know, he is comatose in a hospital bed. Henry's mom (Mary Steenburgen) beckons wayward daughter Franny (Anne Hathaway) home from her worldly pursuit of a Ph.d in Anthropology.
The Nicholas Sparks-like teary tropes are there: For instance, her folk singing brother, Henry (Ben Rosenfield), is in a coma while her mother (Mary Steenburgen) is eccentric and Franny (Hathaway) has been estranged from her and her brother . Enter heartthrob folksinger James Forester (Johnny Flynn), who sings sexy naturalistic songs and wins doctoral candidate Franny's heart.
The good part of this cliché is that the love grows organically, not swiftly or too cutely. Although his singing is seductive and his look shaggy handsome, he's playing down his charisma, and that angle makes Franny too low-key and mom almost hyper when she's not quite that.
Franny is a role that gives Hathaway nothing to do other than practice crying and giving looks of concern. Johnny Flynn is a talented musical performer but that doesn't change the fact that you forget the music, which comes courtesy of Jenny Lewis (from the indie band Rilo Kiley) and her boyfriend Johnathan Rice, almost immediately after it ends. Otherwise he's kinda glum too, unless they're together, in which case sometimes they smile. It's a romance built on almost nothing other than needing whoever is in close proximity. Showcasing some really talented performers around the city, it's too bad "Song" has to keep its proximity closest to these two.
6.1/10·IMDb
33%·Rotten Tomatoes
48%·Metacritic
6/10 - Verdict
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