“Hearts Beat Loud”: Rolling Until the Drift Away

Hearts Beat Loud is a let’s form a band picture about a father-daughter duo enduring the last few beats before college rupture and empty nest. The music is important but it is secondary to recording the music of their hearts. The movie is a poignant and satisfying album full of sweet times, bittersweet encounters and smart riffs on the awareness of talent subsumed to a secure future.

Sam (a poignant voice Kiersey Clemons) has talent and despite her record store father’s ( a bearded Nick Offerman hitting the right notes) urging and some Spotify success resists the siren call of music producers for a sensible premed reality.

Director Brett Haley knows that the form a band genre is a wisp at heart and wisely uses that knowledge to form poignancy for all the awakenings, discoveries, heartbreaks and leavings to come.

Haley smartly cast talent that can do their own singing and playing. The grooves Clemons and Offerman generate allow Haley to connect that with the universal memory of every parent and adult age child watching in the theater. Every ballad, love and breakup song becomes a tear jerker.

Hearts Beat Loud has a gentle touch with a big pull. Every one who has grownup knows it’s song.