For a film that has multiple 10-star reviews with opinions such as "Best film ever", "Playing With Beethoven" leaves it's audience wishing they could invent time travel and stop themselves from paying 5$ for a 2 hour movie that could have been 20 minutes.
Minor spoilers ahead, as I'd like to dive a bit deeper as to why this film left my eyebrow permanently raised for saying "Huh?" throughout the entire viewing.
The story revolves around Josh and Charlotte, two "gifted" classical pianists, that are both playing in an important, once every 5 years music competition. The film starts the day before said competition, so we'd think that tension is running high, right? Nah, not really. The characters mention the big competition throughout the film, yet decide that time is better spent doing everything else, other than practice for the opportunity of a lifetime. Ok, maybe they're just that confident, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. They are the main characters, gotta have plot armor.
So we've established that the competition is pretty important, given the fact that it will take the winner to the next level in their career. But the film decides to take us through a ride of mind numbing exposition, letting the character go on long soliloquies about their life and past challenges. Ok, why? Why have the character tell us their sad stories instead of showing it? There was so much information thrown at us, that halfway through the movie I completely forgot about the competition until someone mentioned it again.
The writing is very simple, and easy to understand, but makes the entire story void of anything gripping. I feel like I've seen episodes of "The Kardashians" that were way more thrilling.
A big part of the movie was supposed to be the music itself. For a film that has Beethoven in the title, there was very little Beethoven actually played. And the music that was played was, how should I say this, amateur at best. I'm not trying to be rude, but for a film that paints the characters as prodigies, I was very confused with their unimpressive skills. Isn't this a top conservatory? They're good, by they aren't that good.
There's a lot in this film that leaves me wanting more. The characters are filled with stereotypes (Absentee African-American father, orphan delinquent daughter, polar opposite characters falling in love, crazy old music teacher, the list goes on), and the actors are struggling with the smorgasbord of endless monologues. On top of that, Naomi Druskez, who plays Charlotte, has a an accent that thickens with each 10 minute mark of the movie. Why does she have an accent? Well, the explanation in the film makes little sense, since her siblings speak perfect English. Charlotte adopted her accent because her grandma had an accent. But she grew up in the US, she probably interacted with English speaking people all the time, so it's strange that she has such a thick accent.
Other notable moments: at some point they break into a music hall (with a crowbar, mind you, very inconspicuous), but the hall had people in it (a janitor named Daniel played by Clint Howard and a whole choir singing in another room), so why break in? Why use a crowbar, when you can use just use the front door like a normal person? Guess they don't teach that at art school.
About halfway through, a seemingly normal interaction between two side characters erupts into a mini musical. Yes, you heard it right, a mini musical and with just the side characters. This was so out of place, since every other musical aspect of "Playing With Beethoven" was a live performance. But the director decided to add an unnecessary musical number, most likely because she wanted to use the talents of Shannon Elizabeth (Bryn), one of the more notable actors in this production. You can literally cut it out of the movie, and it wouldn't change the story by an inch. Try it, I promise it works.
The way I'd describe the ending, is the way Gen X kids would describe last years memes - cringe. Major spoilers ahead:
You guys remember the big competition? So, Josh, resident classical pianist, decides to stop his performance to the respected judges and play a fusion version of classical piano and jazz. In the middle of his performance, he didn't start with it, or finish with it, literally stopped, said a bunch of words that would probably mean nothing to the judges, and played something that they can't even critique. Guess what? He won. This tells me the people behind this movie know close to nothing about the competitive classical music world/industry. This would be an instant disqualification, with no excuses. He literally didn't play his set.
As the movie progresses, and the puzzle piece move "perfectly" into place, the only solace I had was from the performance of Arik Floyd - Josh. In some of the more emotional scenes of the film, we get to see more of his range, outside of being the quirky, nerdy, no-social life musician (oh hi, Whiplash and La La Land, funny seeing your tropes here).
The filmmakers need to understand their own story they are trying to tell us, before presenting it in a jumbled format that we saw before the screen. Nothing really happens in this movie, but a lot is said. So where does that leave us? Well, if you're like me, you'd probably spend the first 15 minutes figuring out why there is a review calling this "An Odyssey" and then another hour writing your first ever IMDb review.
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