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Nick Offerman and Kiersey Clemons in Hearts Beat Loud.Jon Pack/Gundpowder & Sky

  • Hearts Beat Loud
  • Written by: Brett Haley, Marc Basch
  • Directed by: Brett Haley
  • Starring: Nick Offerman and Kiersey Clemons
  • Classification: PG/97 minutes

Rating:

2.5 out of 4 stars

In the friendly, uncomplicated light comedy Hearts Beat Loud, a melodious teenage daughter and her guitar-playing single father are working on a song together. She dismisses her lyrics as meaningless. “Meaning, schmeaning,” he counters. “This is a mood piece. It just has to have a feeling.” So it goes with their song, and so it goes with this modest, delightful-enough movie. Nick Offerman plays Frank, the dad who has run a Brooklyn record shop for about as long as his daughter (played by Kiersey Clemons) has been alive. Now she’s heading away to a school on the other side of the country and he’s shutting down the store: An everything-must-go sale, if you catch the metaphor of director/co-writer Brett Haley (The Hero, I’ll See You in My Dreams). The film hums to tepid indie-pop and is sentimental to a fault, but the cast is a soulful bunch (including Toni Collette and a wonderful Ted Danson) who breathes life into a film that is all heart.

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