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Hear My Song
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by Miramax/Paramount
Sales Rank: 296
Price: $19.95
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Micky O'Neill (Adrian Dunbar) is a born salesman. As the booker of the local theater/dance hall, he is famous for hiring almost-celebrities like Franc Cinatra. When he is unable to tell his girlfriend (the beautiful Tara Fitzgerald) that he loves her, in so many words, she storms out of their bedroom. In order to win her back--and curry favor with her mother, not to mention keep his job--he decides to book famous tenor Joe Locke, who's wanted by the government for tax reasons and hasn't performed in decades. So begins Micky's quest to find the reclusive singer--and himself. The movie is so enthusiastically cheerful, it wins you over early on with its good-natured energy, and then never lets up. <I>Hear My Song</I> is like a rural British version of <I>The Blues Brothers</I>, with a tenor instead of a blues band, minus a whole lotta car wrecks, but a final performance surrounded by police. Really, how can you argue with that? <I>--Andy Spletzer</I>
Viewer Reviews
"Hear My Song" (1992), an Irish film, a romantic musical comedy/drama, was written by its star, Adrian Dunbar, with Peter Chelsom, its first-time director, and is filmed on location in gritty Liverpool, England, and the lovely Irish countryside. It's based on the life story of the Irish tenor Josef Locke, born Joseph McLaughlin, who knew great success in England, but was driven back to his home country by the tax man.
Adrian Dunbar, a frequently-seen actor, plays Micky O'Neill, who has leased a down-at-heels Liverpool nightclub from the large and boisterous Irish-English Ryan family (Liverpool has lots of Irish immigrants, and their descendents). He proceeds to run the club further into the ground through bad bookings; first there's Franc Cinatra, then Mr. X, allegedly Joe Locke. But Mr. X was worse than a bad business decision: the mother, Cathleen Doyle (played by the still-gorgeous Shirley Ann Field), of Micky's lovely girlfriend Nancy Doyle, (played by the luminous Tara Fitzgerald) once had a thing with the real Joe Locke, and Mr. X, at Micky's instigation, has taken advantage of her. The Ryans and the Doyles are furious with Micky: the situation's desperate. So he decides to hobo off to Ireland, to track down the real Joe Locke, (played by Ned Beatty, enjoying the role of his life). Once in Ireland, Micky meets up with his best friend, Fintan O'Donnell, a booking agent,played by the also frequently seen James Nesbitt. (Oddly enough, both Dunbar and Nesbitt are sons of Northern Ireland.) The friends find Locke and his senior-citizen posse, and lure them back to the U.K. to save Micky's hide. In the U.K., of course, the taxman, Jim Abbott, played to the hilt by David McCallum, "That Man from Uncle," remembers Locke only too well.
The movie was made for less than 2 million pounds, in less than six weeks, but it's consistently funny, although admittedly lightweight, sometimes sentimental. Micky has a great repeating line, "I haven't been where you've been, I haven't seen what you've seen," and commitment issues. A cow figures in two hilarious scenes. Beatty seamlessly lip-synchs to the glorious work of an actual well-known Irish tenor, with whom I'm not familiar. Between them they deliver a marvelous "Hear My Song," that leaves not a dry eye, nor seat, in the house. (I've got another rendition of that song in my house, by the young Frank Sinatra, who was, of course, a pretty good tenor himself. And he knew a good thing when he heard it.)
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Hear My Song
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