ONCE by jaiskizzy

the gist: a struggling musician takes his acoustic heartaches to the streets for a few bucks and meets a cute czech chick who has as much passion for music as he does. he plays the guitar, she, the piano and they immediately glue together, igniting the needed spark to each of their stagnant lives. from a magical music shop moment to a wondrous recording studio session, the nameless songsmiths find themselves in the dilemma of starting anew or patching things up with their pasts. will this love song of a movie end with them in a duet or doing solos? can i do this review without musical puns?

the reaction: ive been asked a lot of times if i play the guitar and i wonder, do i really carry a rockstar demeanor to cause that question? but i do wish i play the guitar sometimes. however, i dont, can't and probably won't for the rest of this life. i play the drums though. poorly. anyways, after watching this movie once (title, not number) i completely gave that wish up. because even if i did start learning to play now, i do not possess a singing voice that came close to half the power of glen's (the guy who plays...the guy in the film). dude sings with a lot of heart, and i really mean a lot. every song he sings, he sings with raw emotion, as if he's not actually singing and just telling you how he feels exactly and it just happened to have rhymes and a tune. given that he's a real musician, frontman of a band called the frames, and it was him who actually wrote the songs in real life and as portrayed in the film, but man, you could really see how much pain he endured and used to create the songs. when he starts screaming in "say it to me now" in the street, i didn't think he was crazy as i would if i saw someone do that in real life. but that's the thing: nobody's ever seen a real sidewalk singer perform like that. i think i'd be more likely to throw my money in if there was one. (i actually flicked a 20-peso bill at glen but it just bounced off the tv screen).

and there's, marketa, the cute czech chick i mentioned awhile ago. she doesnt have a name in the movie as well, but let's call her marketa so i wouldn't run out of synonyms for "girl". it was a great idea, by the way, to keep the characters unnamed, that they could be anyone, you, your friend, your friend's friend who cheated on your friend's girlfriend. anyways, like glen, marketa is also a real-life musician. her voice is sweet and she plays the piano without camera-angle cheats. again, you feel her love for music that when the two of them play and sing together for the first time, you will get goosebumps as i did. that was a great scene. a perfect (pitch perfect? tee-hee) translation of those jam sessions i used to have with my best friend luigi, even the ones over beer, with the "you do this, i do that" beginning and just melded together as you went along. what makes the scene work, i think, is the fact they're real people doing something they actually do in real life and not something they rehearsed over and over. it was like, the director just said, okay, you two do your thing and i'll just film it.

but that's where the only problem i have about the film comes in. they're non-actors. and when they do try to act, it slightly seems fake. cant blame them though but i guess the director could have tried something to bring over the realism of the scenes where the two leads where just being their real selves. oh and by the way, this is a love story, but more on the love for music and not too much on the love between glen and marketa. their musical "affair" serves as a mere buffer episode, like an rpg sidequest, so don't scratch your heads over the lack of actual contact or the ending. you're looking for the movie where, just by the halfway mark, the female lead has already cheated on her husband with a guy she barely knows. this aint it.

dont watch this movie if you are one of those people who feel like they dont have any talents because you'd probably hate your parents and wish you had one to be just as passionate on. a "modern-day musical" but not quite, i highly recommend this one with what little credibility i have. okay. im gonna go bang on my drums for a while...


the good: the songs, the shots, the realism
the bad: when the non-actors act
the ugly: the holes on the guy's guitar
the verdict: 9 vacuum cleaners


he who cannot sing.