GOOD VIBRATIONS (Lisa Barros D’Sa, Glenn Leyburn). 101 minutes. Opens Friday (December 20). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNNN
In the 1970s, when Northern Ireland was tearing itself apart, Terri Hooley decided to open a record shop in Belfast. To enter, you had to love music and be willing to leave your politics at the door.
It mostly worked.
Good Vibrations is a manic, joyous dramatization of this story from directors Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn, starring Richard Dormer in an ingratiating turn as the effervescent Hooley and Jodie Whittaker as his mostly supportive bride, Ruth.
Colin Carberry and Glenn Patterson’s script doesn’t have much time for the politics of the era the proudly apolitical Hooley had a habit of throwing himself into each new venture – opening Good Vibrations, managing and recording various Irish punk bands, producing and releasing the Undertones’s era-defining single Teenage Kicks – without asking whether he was working with Catholics or Protestants.
This is the story of a man so in love with music that he dedicated himself to spreading it, and changed the culture around him as a result. So, yes, it’s more or less an Irish version of 24 Hour Party People. That film’s director, Michael Winterbottom, is credited as an executive producer.
You should consider that an endorsement.
