Sing Street Film Review
Sing Street is a musical comedy- drama created by John Carney, that takes place in Dublin in the mid 1980’s. Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) is a 14 -year old boy from a middle class family who loves watching Top of the Pops with his stoner older brother, Brendan (Jack Reynor). When his parents (Aidan Gillen and Maria Doyle Kennedy) get into financial difficulty they decide to move Conor from his posh private school to the strict Christian Brothers school on Synge Street. In addition to his parents’ financial problems, their marriage is also in trouble, at a time when divorce is illegal in Ireland. Refined Conor sticks out like a sore thumb among his rough classmates in his new school. As well as having to worry about being beaten up by the school bully, he also has Brother Baxter, the sadistic principal to contend with. One day after school he notices a beautiful girl, Raphina (Lucy Boynton) across the street. She tells him she is a model, and he says he is in a band, and asks her if she would like to appear in their music video.
The only problem is he hasn’t got a band. He tells his small, ginger haired friend Darren (Ben Carolan) that he needs to form a band. Darren elects himself as band manager and asks a group of musical kids to join their band. They call themselves ‘Sing Street’ after the location of their school. Conor experiments with different hair and clothes styles depending on what type of music they are playing at the time. His new pop star image gives him the confidence to stand up to Barry the Bully (Ian Kenny.) However, Brother Baxter (Don Wycherley) is livid when he sees Conor wearing make- up and demands that he removes it. When Conor refuses, Baxter drags him to the toilet and viciously scrubs it off his face. Wounded by this, Conor seeks revenge by writing a song about it and sings it at the end of year school disco.
This is a light-hearted film that has a touch of nostalgia to it as you go back in time to the 80’s when Robert Smith and John Taylor were huge pop icons. It is a laugh a minute from beginning to end. The chemistry between sweet, romantic Conor and the stunning, but cool Raphina is effective throughout the movie. I thoroughly enjoyed this film and I would give it 5 stars.
