Hearts Beat Loud

Synopsis: In the hip Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook, single dad and record store owner Frank (Nick Offerman) is preparing to send his daughter Sam (Kiersey Clemons) off to college whilst being forced to close his vintage record shop due to lack of business. Hoping to stay connected through their shared musical passions, Frank urges Sam to turn their weekly jam sessions into a live act.

Hearts Beat Loud is a cute movie. A little too cute for its own good but a likeable diversion nevertheless. Films about “putting a band together” such as William H. Macy’s indie-style debut Rudderless (2013) or a bigger budget variant like Rikki and the Flash (2015) seem always handicapped by making the road to success appear far too easy to be credible. The beauty of Brett Haley’s film, which he co-wrote with Marc Basch, is that, with a certain degree of indulgence, he makes his story convincing. When Nick Offerman picks up a guitar and sings it feels like he, and not some studio muso whose work has been seamlessly integrated in post-production, is really accompanying himself. Ditto for Kiersey Clemons' vocals which are direct and powerful. And though the latter stages, when father and daughter perform to a well-pleased audience on the record store’s closing night, are a little too polished, for the most part the film has a laid-back vibe that charms.

Much of this easy-going charm is down to Offerman’s unforced performance as the widowed Dad who is facing his daughter’s impending departure for college with trepidation, not just because he has brought her up alone since his wife died some years earlier but because she will take with her his opportunity to exercise his passion for making music. When Frank uploads a song he and Sam recorded to Spotify and it becomes a hit his happiness is palpable as for a moment he imagines everything that he wants in life coming together. Fortunately the film doesn’t lose its sense of proportion here with Sam sensibly pointing out to Frank the rather delusional nature of his idea that they form a band and start gigging.  

To move things along Sam’s character is rounded out by a romance with a slightly older girl (Sasha Lane, memorable from 2016’s American Honey) whilst Frank is given various relationships in the form of a well-groomed aged mother (Blythe Danner), a stoner buddy (an in-joke played by Ted Danson) who runs a local bar and a sympathetic landlady (Toni Collette). The, to me at least, hitherto unseen Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook, a former shipping port now in the process of being reclaimed by modern café society also gets a nice showing whilst the original songs by Keegan DeWitt including the title number are catchy in an indie pop kind of way and are given good exposure in live performances as the story unfolds.

Hearts Beat Loud is far from being a challenging film indeed at times it’s a little too easy (for instance I never grasped how Frank could afford to send his daughter to med school) but with a talented cast and a low-key manner for its 97 minute run-time it’s a pleasing-enough companion.

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