Hear My Song

I don't think Peter Chelsom's appreciation will grow much today, with audiences and critics more inclined to pyrotechnics, flamboyant styles and cynic approach to mankind's troubles. Chelsom is a skilled filmmaker, but for today's tastes his cinema seems too close to the audience's soft hearts, and that is probably his less attractive trait. I like a few of his movies: "The Mighty", "Serendipity" as predictable as it is, and my favorites "Funny Bones" and "Hear My Song" which he also wrote. Both deal with a search and possess a frenetic and funny approach to human foibles, and in this case an enthusiastic leading character, as played by Adrian Dunbar who also co-wrote. He is a nightclub administrator who keeps cheating on his patrons, bringing mediocre artists to perform. When he brings a fake tenor who humiliates his future mother-in-law (Shirley-Ann Field, who had an affair with the real tenor), he embarks on the almost impossible: finding the real singer, who cannot step on Irish soil due to tax evasion. Ned Beatty gives the performance of his life (and that's a lot to say) as the singer, leading the story to a moving conclusion.