That Thing You Do!

1996

PG

Yacs here with a movie review and it feels like it has been a while since my last one. A couple days ago, I took a trip to the local Best Buy and bought some Blu Rays. Among my purchases was this movie that I knew nothing about. One that caught my eye. The movie was titled That Thing You Do! and I noticed that Tom Hanks was on the cover and it mentioned that it was written and directed by him. Along with the theatrical version, there is a director’s cut in it as well. I have never heard of this movie, but as I was looking it up, it seemed like something I could dig, so I gave it a try.

The movie revolves around a young drummer named Guy Patterson (Tom Everett Scott) and his dream to be a musician, particularly a jazz musician. Patterson’s family runs an appliance store in Erie, Pennsylvania and he works there. After a local band’s drummer breaks his arm, Jimmy Mattingly (Johnathon Schaech) and Lenny Haise (Steve Zahn) ask Guy if he would like to guy their band. Guy accepts. This movie is set in the summer of 1964 and they’re in the midst of The Beatles craze, so they want a name that contains a little word play. With a little help from Jimmy’s girlfriend Faye (Liv Tyler) and their bass player (Ethan Embry), they settle on The Oneders. It is pronounced “One-ders”, but people mistakenly call them The “O-Need-ers”. Their first gig is at a local talent show and Guy brings his girlfriend Tina (Charlize Theron) to the show, but she doesn’t really want to be there. The song that they performed was “That Thing You Do”, a song that Jimmy wrote that was intended to be a slow ballad, but as they are ready to perform, Guy picks up the pace on the drums and it is instantly made into an up-tempo song with a pop/rock flavor. The song is a hit with the crowd and The Oneders win the talent show along with $100 and are asked to perform at a local pizza restaurant. They record the song in a local church with the help of Guy’s uncle, who happened to be the church’s music director.

While playing at Villapiano’s, the local pizza place, a local promoter walks in and likes what he hears. Faye had a record stand selling the 45’s and the promoter, named Phil Horace (Chris Ellis), buys a record and later approaches the group to get their single played on the radio. The Oneders agree for him to become their manager. They soon become local radio sensations and are booked to play at local events. At first, Guy’s girlfriend, Tina, was happy for him, but it is found out that she dumps Guy for her dentist. The group is becoming more and more popular each day and soon it is realized that their current manager can only take them so far, so Phil introduces Guy to Mr. White (Tom Hanks), who happens to be a major rep for Playtone Records and is interested in signing the band. Although Jimmy was reluctant with all of this, the band ultimately agrees to let Mr. White become their manager. The first thing that Mr. White does as their manager is change their name to The Wonders. He also says that they need matching suits and Guy needs something that sets him apart, so Guy wears sunglasses on stage. The bass player says that he can only stay in the band until the end of August, because he has to report to South Carolina and has joined the Marines. The band is a big hit touring state fairs and they keep climbing the charts each week. Mr. White tells them that they will be flying to Los Angeles to perform on TV, a film, and even do radio spots. The group is excited about being in LA, but their interest in being a band is slowly wilting away. The Wonders grow apart and it turns out that they will only amount to a one-hit wonder.

As I mentioned earlier, I knew nothing about this film prior to watching it, but I have to say, I thought it was really good. It’s rated a 6.9/10 on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes has it at 93%. My expectations weren’t very high, but I was impressed. I personally like movies and shows that are set in the 1960’s and I wanted to watch this as soon as I could. Tom Hanks wrote and directed this film and it was his first effort in both and I don’t think he could’ve done a much better job. Also, another thing that I noticed was the fact that this movie had a pretty star-studded cast and many of them were just getting their acting starts. This was only Charlize Theron’s second speaking role and it was Tom Everett Scott’s first movie role. The rest of the main cast, excluding Tom Hanks, had only appeared in a couple films prior to That Thing You Do! You may recognize Liv Tyler from The Lord of the Rings trilogy and also being Steven Tyler’s daughter. Ethan Embry was probably most known from playing Rusty Griswold in Vegas Vacation, Steve Zahn was probably most know for his role as the dad in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies and War for the Planet of the Apes. Bryan Cranston, Rita Wilson, and Colin Hanks also had minor roles in the film.

There is a director’s cut of this film and I haven’t watched it yet, but I intend to real soon because it contains a lot of backstory that we don’t see in the theatrical version. With that being said though, I don’t think I would have changed the way I watched it. I thought the theatrical version was ambiguous enough to be interesting, yet they gave you enough pertinent info for it to make sense.

I would definitely recommend this film and I personally want to watch the director’s cut as soon as I can. It is a fun comedy that isn’t brash, but also isn’t too corny either. The movie does contain a couple drinking scenes, there aren’t any drug references, the sexual innuendo is relatively clean, and there is a little mild language. With all that being said, I would venture to say anyone over the age of 10 should be good to watch this. This was a funny and somewhat surprisingly great film.

GRADE: 4.3/5

Yacs

Movie Review: That Thing You Do!