Ain't no way to keep a band together. Bands come and go. You got to keep on playin', no matter with who.

I'm Guy Patterson, I'm from Erie, Pennsylvania, I'm in a band called The Wonders and we just cut a record, we're out here on the coast and I play the drums and I have all your records well not all of them but a lot of them but ah at least I did until some of them got swiped when I was stationed in Germany and you were playing in Germany at the time that I was stationed there, but you know what I couldn't see you because you were playing in Hamburg and I was stationed in Munich but I listen to your records and I think you're great.

There is a sheer competence to That Thing You Do!, a fim that is slightly overlong ^[1] but capable from start to finish. No beat is surprising; no scene is revelatory; everything moves with a grace and light-chuckle ease like a particularly well-maintained carnival ride. The surrounding cast are all doing a great job (especially Liv Tyler, who does her best with a script that requires her to sit around and do nothing but project and collect unrequited love); Tom Everett Scott gives an absolute lights-out performance that makes me surprised that this was not his ticket to a broader stardom.

Does this movie share any insights about fame, passion, or the human condition? Not really. There's a child-like sensibility to the entire thing, a refusal to budge from the American Storybook narrative arc that I at this point readily associate with Tom Hanks on either side of the camaera. But it is well-done, and provides relief, and purports to do little else than that. (And the title track is a banger!)

★★★