I read the following synopsis of Hearts Beat Loud on Movie Insider, “In the hip Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook, single dad and record store owner Frank (Nick Offerman) is preparing to send his hard-working daughter Sam (Kiersey Clemons) off to college, while being forced to close his vintage shop. Hoping to stay connected through their shared musical passions, Frank urges Sam to turn their weekly “jam sesh” into a father-daughter live act. After their first song becomes an Internet breakout, the two embark on a journey of love, growing up and musical discovery.” I thought, “Hard pass. Absolutely not.” I imagined a montage of a cutesy father and daughter enjoying the benefits of fame and shuddered as I had a vague image of the Cyruses on a big screen. Then when the movie was released, and I saw the poster, I remembered how much I loved Parks and Recreation.
It also did not hurt that Hearts Beat Loud featured a white actor as the father, and a biracial, black actor as the daughter, which happens to mirror my family makeup and is not often depicted in media. It did not register until I was in the theater that the film unfolds in New York City, my hometown. I should have loved this movie, but I didn’t. It felt incomplete as if it needed another draft. While I enjoyed the musical sequences and am glad that it bypassed my mistaken initial assumptions of the music’s purpose, these moments felt expanded to make up for the lack of substance on the daughter’s side of the story, which felt truncated to give the spotlight to the father. I actually would not have had a problem with the movie if it had just focused on one character, the father, but when it is supposed to focus on the father, the daughter then them as a pair, it is uneven.
Other than when they were collaborating, she seemed like the parent, and he seemed like the child. It felt as if the movie did not intend to address parentification, but accidentally did, and the subtext is that she is moving as far away as possible and swinging to the extreme professional right by choosing medicine over music because their relationship is enervating. In spite of all evidence to the contrary, Hearts Beat Loud seems to insist that they have a great relationship, and that dad is carefree and fun, not irresponsible and stress inducing. Enough focus wasn’t devoted to the daughter’s romantic relationship. At the beginning, she talks to someone in the gallery, and before the audience knows anything about the mother’s demise, her girlfriend gasps and clearly knows the whole story, which tells me that they are close and in love, but Hearts Beat Loud never showed that develop. The daughter’s life is implied and hastily sketched.
Hearts Beat Loud frustrated me because it is aware of the financial impossibility of living well in New York then brushes it aside as if everything will just work out. When we initially meet the father, he is at his place of business, a record store in Brooklyn. He is brusque with customers, but charming enough to his landlord to keep his rent low. He is at a professional and personal turning point, which explains his uneven personality, but it still does not explain how a single father was able to get his kid this far. Why do people believe in him? Because he is likable is not a good enough answer.
Hearts Beat Loud does enough off beat things to feel genuine and earthy, but hastily moves forward in a way that never feels credible. It is definitely better than Brad’s Status. Both films address fathers looking back on their lives as they watch their children embark on adulthood. In Brad’s Status, the father is envious and seems incapable of genuine connection to anyone whereas Offerman’s character is looking for clarity. I never doubted his love for his wife and daughter. I never got the sense that he did not want her to live a full life or was trying to hold her back, although he was. He was a man that had it all even if he never received public validation or only experienced fleeting success, but he was angry at the ambiguity in his relationships, which once were life giving. Are his relationships professional and personal? He keeps trying to make lightning strike in the same place, and outside of his family, he never can replicate it, which is the actual reason that he clings to his daughter, not because he is trying to stunt her growth. His frustration works best in his scenes with his landlord, who is played by the perfect Toni Collette, who is having a great summer with this movie and Hereditary.
Hearts Beat Loud is good at the off kilter moments of squashing our initial reading of the emotional pulse of a scene, then coming around to it just to push it away again. When the landlord first appears, I expected the romance angle, which immediately was dashed on the rocks of business logistics, not flirting, then suddenly veers into flirting and squashed into friendship. On one hand, she does not owe him anything, but while I don’t approve of his reaction, it is human. This relationship managed in a short amount of time to give me a three dimensional portrait of two people as individuals and a unit. The friendship with Ted Danson feels like Cheers except this time with weed instead of women. The mother and son relationship falls completely flat and is practically nonexistent although the grandmother and granddaughter relationship works moderately better.
Hearts Beat Loud made me slightly angry because while it was a diverse movie, I still felt as if this diversity had a token, background flavor, not a substantial, weighty role. It was short hand to let you know that these were good people. Where were the black family members? If you have a black mama, you have black family members, and a simple line about the mother not having family could have solved that problem. The majority of the music was very independent, not soulful, which again is fine, but also weird. I was raised in majority white neighborhoods and listen to predominantly white music, but even I thought it was a little white. This is not a bad thing. The music was beautiful and the best part of the movie, but it is unusual. I’m not saying that this choice was intentional, but if it turns out that the filmmakers don’t have that organic experience of having black family members, then I would not be surprised because how can you know what you don’t know. This omission is why you need diversity in the film industry—to bring the stories to life.
Hearts Beat Loud was uneven, but well intentioned. The pacing was more deliberate than I would have liked, and the story needed a few more drafts or outside critiques. The overall lesson is a good one: live a full, not a safe life, which uses all your talents even if you are not successful. I applaud its heart while I am disappointed by the execution.