SONG ONE (Kate Barker-Froyland). Opens at the Kingsway Theatre on Friday (January 23). See listing. Rating: NN
Where to watch: Netflix
Anne Hathaway doesn’t play regular people that often, so when she does it’s worth taking note. Franny, her character in Kate Barker-Froyland’s Song One, may not be entirely ordinary – she’s a grad student studying nomadic cultures in Morocco – but she’s an actual person, not a noble sufferer or an astronaut.
Called home to New York when her brother Henry (Ben Rosenfield) is hit by a cab and knocked into a coma, Franny busies herself with finding out what Henry was up to before his accident, and winds up meeting her brother’s idol, British singer/songwriter James Forester (Johnny Flynn).
As Franny and James wind up seeing more and more of each other, Barker-Froyland tries to shift Song One from a clenched family drama to a looser love story, but it doesn’t really work. Though Hathaway plays both modes just fine, Flynn isn’t a strong enough actor to play against her, or even to suggest his character’s charisma. He’s got chops as a musician, though, and it certainly helps that he’s performing songs written expressly for the film by Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice.
If you’re a Hathaway fan, this will be worth your time she’s in every scene, and builds a convincingly tense relationship with screen mom Mary Steenburgen. But if you’re looking for the next Once, well, this isn’t it.
