Nick Offerman, Kiersey Clemons
“HEARTS BEAT LOUD” My rating: B+
97 minutes | MPAA rating: PGH-13
“Hearts Beat Loud” is this year’s “Once,” a dramedy with music about a father/daughter relationship that that could very well be the summer’s most satisfying movie.
Writer/director Brett Haley, whose first two features (“Hero,” “I’ll See You in My Dreams”) focused on septuagenarian protagonists, here sheds a few decades, centering the film on Kiersey Clemons, a quietly spectacular young talent.
Frank Fisher (Nick Offerman) runs a record store (no CDs) in Red Hook, N.J. More accurately, he’s running it into the ground. He has little patience for boneheaded customers.
Frank is a widower whose daughter Sam (Clemons) is preparing to leave for college (UCLA…she’s on a pre-med path). Frank is more than a little conflicted about this…for one thing, he’ll miss Sam terribly.
For another, how’s he going to pay for that university education?
Haley’s screenplay (with Mark Basch) chronicles the last days of the record store as well as the growing musical collaboration between father and daughter (he’s a guitarist, she’s a keyboardist with incredible pipes).
For Sam this is simply a fun little hobby with Dad. When he asks her what they should call their band she responds with a groan: “We’re not a band.” Frank jumps on that comment; soon they’re performing as We’re Not A Band.
Butler's Cinema Scene 