Show & Tell: Hearts Beat Loud
School is back in session, an expression that can still send a slight chill down my spine even after an embarrassing number of decades later. Yes, there’s still the Labor Day weekend, but there’s always a touch of the melancholy about that last three-day gulp of freedom. Whoever the astronomer was who decreed that summer lasts until September 21 clearly didn’t live in New England. (And it doesn’t help that August, which was a total sweat bastard for much of its length, is now showing us what it could have done for us if it had felt like it. Sigh.)
For me, the departure of August is a source of neither pain nor pleasure. My favorite times of the year are spring, before the mosquitoes hatch, and autumn, after the first frost kills the mosquitoes. You may have noticed a theme there.
But I digress.
Tomorrow, in celebration of the easy-going spirit of the ideal summer, we will be discussing Hearts Beat Loud, a father/daughter conflict/bonding comedy that features two very attractive performers.
Starring as Frank Fisher, the father who wants very much to connect with his daughter before she heads out of his life and off to college, we have Nick Offerman, fresh from his triumphant stint as the bearded government hater Ron Swanson in Parks and Recreation.
And playing the daughter, we have Kiersey Clemons, a rising star who is keeping her foothold in television (Angie Tribeca) while making a strong move into movies (she just bagged her first major superhero movie: The Flash from Warner Brothers). Clemons stars as Sam Fisher, a young woman who enjoys her weekly musical jam sessions with her father, but isn’t prepared for what happens when one of their songs gets wicked popular on the intertubes.
The script piles on a little extra emotional baggage because Frank is losing his vintage music store and there are side relationships that provide both support and conflict.
Add in a supporting cast of spectacular power (Ted Danson, Blythe Danner, Toni Collette, Sasha Lane) and you have the bones of a very nice movie.
Hearts Beat Loud isn’t a searing social document or an emotional blockbuster. It’s a late summer fast food kind of a movie. Plenty of good chemistry and a good story with emotional resonances for any parent who’s had to say goodbye to a child (and any child who’s been on the other side).
We will meet to discuss Hearts Beat Loud tomorrow, Tuesday, August 28 at 7pm in The Historic Theater. I hope to see you there.
Paul Goodwin
TMHMG