ONCE | on hbo

Missed this one two years ago, and have wanted to see it since. Many compared AUGUST RUSH to ONCE--they both feature a love story, a male musician, and some great city locations--but the similarities kind of stop there. ONCE is...a remarkable achievement. And I don't mean to discredit RUSH, but ONCE doesn't just hit the ball; it knocks it out of the park.

Did I just make a baseball metaphor?

Like Juan-Pierre of the LA Dodgers, ONCE goes into beast mode!

Yes, I did.*

But ONCE is, uh, better than baseball. ONCE is like...an ice cube melting. It starts out all packed together--boy sings a song, boy meets girl--and you think you know where it's going to go, but then it settles into its warmth and puddles out into something refreshingly original (did that metaphor work?), both happy and sad. It's romantic without being sentimental; it's quirky without being too clever; it's sweet without being too artificial; it's real without being dark. It's indy, but it feels new. It made me cry. And it stars that guy from The Frames!

In America, musicians who star as musicians in movies are kind of jokes. Britney Spears in CROSSROADS; Mariah Carey in GLITTER. And when a part calls for a musician, they often use an actor: Joaquin Phoenix in WALK THE LINE; Jonathan Rhys Meyers in AUGUST RUSH. Sure, there's a Jamie Foxx in RAY to make waves, but in general, musician in real life does not equal believable musician in film. Enter Glen Hansard who plays our starring "Guy" to Marketa Irglova's "Girl" in ONCE. Without them both, this film would not have been the fairytale it was. Sure, their accents were a little hard for me to follow at first (thick Irish has never been an easy one for me), but the brogue was worth deciphering, most definitely.

The tale between them unfolds sweetly, warming around the edges, melting even cynical me and showing that, as you might expect, (spoiler alert) the best love stories are the ones that happen once.

ONCE (2006)
plot: Music is the food of love.
thought: Bittersweet yet good to eat.
in five: 4.5/5
fall in slowly: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/once/

*=I actually hate sports. Everything but football-football (i.e., soccer) and American college football--and there still everything but my alma mater's football--and ice skating. Oh, and competitive cheer. And I can stand Olympics swimming and gymnastics. But otherwise, through and through, me no likey the back and forth competition. It's not a truth I tend to confess, but there you go; I'm a team sports-hater.