Once (3 Stars)

An unnamed busker plays songs on the street of Dublin. He doesn't earn enough to live on, so he also works in his father's vacuum cleaner repair shop. I doubt he earns much, but he's allowed to live and eat at his father's house.

One day he meets a Czech girl, also unnamed, and he begins to have feelings for her, especially when he finds out she's a talented piano player. So it's a typical romantic comedy? Not quite. She's married, though her husband still lives in the Czech Republic. The man is trying to raise money to record a demo disc so he can go to London and become a big star. If only it were that easy.

I'll stop my description of the plot there. The problem is that the film doesn't go anywhere. There are a lot of songs, so many that it's obvious they're padding out the film. Can't the critics see this? "Once" has a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes that it doesn't deserve. The film won an Oscar for the best original song.

Nowadays people say films shouldn't be predictable. "Once" is an example of a film that would have been more enjoyable if it had been predictable. Throughout the film the man and woman are growing closer together, but in the end nothing happens. He goes to London by himself, and her husband arrives from the Czech Republic. The romance that we expect to happen doesn't happen, and it's disappointing. A predictable romantic comedy would have been better.

Success Rate:  + 153.3

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