That Thing You Do! (1996)

(On TV, January 2020) I have a surprisingly soft spot for band movies—basically, anything having to do with the rise and fall of music groups. The Commitments ranks high on my list of favourite films, I unaccountably liked Bohemian Rhapsody despite knowing better and no amount of familiarity will keep me away from musical biopics. With his directorial debut That Thing You Do!, Tom Hanks goes straight for comforting familiarity in charting the unlikely path of a one-hit wonder musical band (called, knowingly enough, “The One-ders”) during the mid-1960s. The period recreation is solid, and so is the formula followed by the film: As our teenage protagonists are plucked from obscurity by a catchy up-tempo take on their song, we’re also driven across America from Pennsylvania to California. The screenwriting is deceptively straightforward, going right to the heart of the formula and never letting go. The performances are just as good as they need to be, with Tom Hanks hovering in the background as a record executive, Liv Tyler in a likable supporting role, and a longer list of cameos than is worth listing here. Musically, it helps a lot that That Thing You Do! can depend on actors with the ability to convincingly play instruments, and sports an insanely catchy tune. (In one of the film’s best touches, this one-hit wonder band almost always plays that one hit, meaning that the audience gets tired of it within the span of the film just as the audiences do in the film’s reality.) There are plenty of references here to mid-1960s pop culture—I caught some of the obvious movie-related ones, such as the wink to the “beach party” series, but there’s a lot more for those who know the period. This captivating historical recreation more than supports the rest of the film and the result is a solid hit for Hanks-the-Director, and a highly enjoyable film in its own right.