If “Once” was a bracing blast of cool spring water, “Begin Again” is a can of Fanta. If “Once” was a piano, “Begin Again” is a keytar. If “Once” was Otis Redding, “Begin Again” is Bruno Mars.
Eight years after “Once,” writer-director John Carney’s musical follow-up is set in a strange combination of tourist-brochure New York and leftover “Rent” sets — everyone is either sleeping on couches as sirens blare or fascinated by Times Square or the Empire State Building.
Mark Ruffalo is a record-company founder who, fired by his own label and rejected by his slutty-phase teen daughter, Violet (Hailee Steinfeld), stumbles into a bar where, in a regrettable fantasy scene, he imagines instruments playing themselves to back up a pretty folk singer (Keira Knightley) strumming her guitar.
The flirtation between them never seems anything but strenuous and artificial. Ruffalo usually relies on the one thing he does brilliantly — slow-talking befuddlement, like a stoner Warren Beatty — but here he’s jittery, manic, punching the words out of his mouth like Eric Roberts. His drunk-loser act fuels similar overbearing work by Knightley. She’s becoming a Muppet of herself, if they have anorexic Muppets, all ping-pong-ball eyes and amazed smiles and cutesiness on the attack. She’s more of a child actress than Steinfeld, who isn’t yet 18.
It’s the kind of movie that sees more grit in New York than is actually here anymore. Sorry, but I don’t believe that a hugely successful record executive like Ruffalo’s Dan is living like a Rolling Stone intern. If Knightley’s Gretta is crashing with a pal, with no apparent income, how is she able to afford to take Violet on a shopping trip?
Gretta loves to talk about Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, and yet she’s crushed at having been dumped by . . . Adam Levine? He plays Dave, her songwriting partner and boyfriend, who hits it big and runs off with someone else. She puts art first and resolves to keep it real, using Dan’s help to record an album outdoors. But if this made any sense, producers would have figured it out 50 years ago. And the end result of her efforts is anodyne Top-40 style pop.
Which I love! The musical interludes are by far the best bits of the film, but let’s not pretend that they’re groundbreaking or gritty. If this movie were a song, it’d be “Life in the Cute Lane.” So the arguments about who’s being True to the Music are silly. When Dave says he wants a hit, Gretta says, “Why?” as if she hadn’t spent about eight scenes sugaring up her stripped-down ballads.
It’s like watching Rihanna and Xtina debating the importance of modesty.