Screen Scene: “Sing Now or Forever Hold Your Peace”
By Devon Dickau
April 26, 2007 9:12 p.m.
“Sing Now or Forever Hold Your Peace”
Director Bruce Leddy
Strand Releasing
(Out Of 5)
With enough passion, anything is possible. At least one would hope so, to imagine how a film like “Sing Now or Forever Hold Your Peace” came to be.
The problem with writer-director Bruce Leddy’s middle-aged comedy is not a lack of passion. On the contrary, the film’s heart may be too big ““ so big that it suffers from inattention to the technical aspects that so inevitably work to create great cinema.
Winner of the Audience Award at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, “Sing Now” follows seven aging male a capella singers after the heyday of their singing careers in their senior year of college.
We enter 15 years later, when the men have become tolerable middle-aged caricatures. We have the successful Hollywood executive with an uptight wife and long-legged nanny, the over-stressed, recently divorced lawyer, and the free spirit from a rich family, among others.
And then, of course, the reason for the bittersweet reunion (bitter because it is a reminder of how much time has passed since the good ol’ college days): the head-over-heels groom-to-be Greg (Mark Feuerstein from “What Women Want”). The group has reunited in the beautiful Hamptons to sing at Greg’s wedding and the excitement ensues.
Though the film largely follows these former a capella stars and their significant others (led by a miscast Molly Shannon) as they traipse around moronically, argue, have sex, sing and dance, the heart of the film lies with the idea that the good life is falling through their fingers like the white Hamptons sand.
Some of the movie’s biggest laughs come from the characters’ comic obsession with getting old. To them, age is an accumulation of loss: hair, jobs and sexual prowess.
But “Mad TV” director Leddy also steps away from the comedy to argue through morbidity that love triumphs over all. It’s not exactly poignant, but it’s enough to earn a smile.
But why are they here again? Oh yes, to sing. The film does not forget this in plot, but misses many opportunities to exploit the film’s inherent call for musical entertainment. The attempts to incorporate singing are far less fun than they should be. There just isn’t enough, besides the few good versions of John Mayer and Ben Folds Five tunes scattered throughout.
Music aside, “Sing Now” undeniably has a message to share. Even as our bodies die, our love only grows stronger. By the end of the movie, the a capella group understands how the art of song has brought them together. But a movie is not just the message it carries.
In terms of cinematography, art direction, music and even the script, “Sing Now” could have been so much better. Sadly, with Leddy, the love for the subject matter has trumped love for the art.
