Sadly Over-hyped

Overrated and overhyped

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This movie feels like the result of a bet. Someone says to the screenwriter "Bet you can't write a suspense movie about a concert pianist who has to play a piece perfectly" and Damien Chazelle says "You're on!".So, OK, it's not a terrible movie; it does about the best you could do given that that's the gimmick it has to work with. But that also doesn't make it a great movie. There's just so much padding; what should have been maybe 45 minutes has a variety of irrelevant nonsense added just to get to 90 minutes. And even the suspense doesn't really work (it has to operate as "tell, not show") because we, the audience, have no idea what actually counts as "playing perfectly". Bottom line is: not every script needs to be made into a movie, even a script that does a reasonable job of winning a bar bet.

Here's a Spanish single-location thriller which received mixed reviews upon release. I'm a huge fan of that particular sub-genre of film-making and you might as well call this PHONE BOOTH with a piano. The story is about a famous concert pianist making a comeback who is challenged by a sniper not to play a single note wrong, or else he'll be shot dead. That's all there is to the story. It's a faintly ridiculous premise, and unfortunately the whole of the narrative is ridiculous and full of plot holes and unbelievable scenarios. The killer in the film has a plan so nonsensical that none of it hangs together at all. Therefore it's quite impressive to say that the film is still watchable despite these massive flaws, thanks in part to Elijah Wood's stoic performance as the put-upon lead.The other issue I had with the film was the direction. Spanish director Eugenio Mira was obviously deathly afraid of making a film with a guy sitting at the piano for most of the running time boring, so he goes out of his way to keep his camera moving with lots of pans and quick-fire editing. It's a real distraction and feels very juvenile; keeping the camera still and letting the actors do their job would have been much better. The cast is a mixed bag with a subdued John Cusack effective in a mainly vocal performance and Alex Winter a lot of fun as an aide. However, Tamsin Egerton is dreadful as the friend character and Kerry Bishe isn't much better. If you can get past all the clichés and ludicrous scenes then you might just enjoy this, although at the end of the day they're too big to ignore.

After playing a dwarf with gigantic feet in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Elijah Wood plays a short piano concert player with gigantic hands in this playful Hitchcock rehashing. Please suspend your disbelief and imagineElijah Wood as a concert player, playing Rachmaripoffs with virtuosity while being threatened through an ear piece by: A mostly invisible John Cusack as the motormouth villain who wants the McGuffin, the movie's high concept: Imagine the concert hall scene of Sir Alfred's The Man Who Knew Too Much, with suspense based on one cymbal crash covering a gunshot (why, since the Ambassador will die and wreak havoc? No idea.) expanded to a whole movie. Yes, ladies and gentlemen of the audience, apart from a useless prologue at the airport, this movie is a classical concert with a conceptual twist.And oh boy, what a twist. The pianist comes and goes in and out of stage, courtesy of a peculiar programme placing an intermission between movements of a same concerto. Please note that this is a two movement concerto, with loooong orchestral passages, which comes as a convenient choice when you have do stop doing your piano stuff to pay a visit to the boiler room.The villain wants a specific sequence of notes for the McGuffin, but does all to prevent the hero to play it right, so obsessed he is by killing his wife (Kerry Bishé), some actress/singer/something who mesmerises the classical audience by singing a torch song from her VIP box, a loooong scene just before pianist and villain fall right on the priceless Bösendorfer. Also the orchestra director does some kind of a stand-up routine, which might strike one as a little odd in front of a connoisseur classical audience. They lap it up nonetheless.What does one forget to mention of such a classical roller-coaster ride? Oh, "La Cinquette", an unplayable piece flawlessly played by Elijah Wood's giant-fingered hand double, a piano equivalent of the blue inflated lady's number in Luc Besson's The Fith Element. Understand "painful to watch and even more painful to listen to, but unmissable". And a half hearted Argento murder in a room full of mirrors. Half a point for the editing of that one.

If sound makes up more than half of the movie experience then Grand Piano is as simple of a concept as it is brilliant. In Grand Piano the worlds greatest concert pianist is set to make his return to the grand stage after freezing and failing an epic piece a few years prior. He plans to make his return while playing the piano of his recently deceased mentor and this is where the movie finds the inspiration for its title. However someone has scribbled down threats in his notes and he is now forced to play every note perfectly if he wishes to stay alive.Elijah Wood plays the main part brilliantly even though he seldom has anyone to act off of and his energy in playing the piano shines through and most of the time comes of as real rather than fake. Using the score in a two-fold meaning, both as a story mechanism and as a suspension builder, works great most of the time and it really showcases the talent behind the movie.Much like many other movies that are based around simple concept or locations it struggles to keep things interesting throughout the entire running time and this plus some stereotypical minor characters unfortunately keeps the movie from being as great as it could have been. But as it stands its a unique, often thrilling, movie that dares to think outside of the box.