Film

A distinctly American side of pie-in-the-sky gullibility is the tart dessert of Craig Zobel’s full meal of a feature. At first, it’s a lark about the music biz. Actually, “music biz” is pushing it. There is a business, yes: Great World of Sound, which we learn is a scam, sending its hungry producers—including new hires Martin (Healy) and boisterous Clarence (Holliday)—into the South’s bluesland to sign up acts, i.e., persuade them to fork over $3,000 in recording costs. As for the music, let’s just say the duo doesn’t strike gold. Admits one earnest strummer, meeting them in their shabby hotel room, “I wrote this song after we watched Brewster’s Millions.” It shows.

Zobel could have coasted on this entertaining spirit of pathetic badness—like a Nashville consisting entirely of characters molded on the untalented waitress who strips to get cheers. But Martin and Clarence do encounter talent: a little girl who sings a “new national anthem” of such devastating cynicism, it’s hard for them to continue with the deception. Ultimately a film about selling out (not buying in), Great World of Sound will move no soundtrack units. If there’s justice, though, it should move plenty of viewers—those aching to see a recognizable conscience behind our fashionable American idolatry.