boychoir | the m0vie blog

Non-Review Review: Boychoir

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2015.

Boychoir hits just about every emotional note that you would expect it to.

Of course, it hits those notes in ways that feel incredibly contrived and emotionally manipulative. Director François Girard and writer Ben Ripley are incredibly cynical in how they choose to resonate with the audience. The script and the direction for Boychoir is advanced with an almost ruthless pragmatism, a pragmatism that is not afraid to kill of relatives to generate tragedy and which is willing to gloss over any real or tangible emotional reactions to get the film to the point that is most coldly calculated to affect the viewer.

Boychoir very much goes through the motions for a film like this. It is a coming of age story set inside a highly competitive environment, juxtaposing a rather working class protagonist with those who have enjoyed privilege from a very young age. It is the story Stet Tate, a young boy who finds himself joining the National Boychoir; who quickly and inevitably discovers that his voice is a rare gift, and discovering exactly where that gift can take him and what it will teach him along the way.

Boychoir is a competent execution of a bunch of familiar tropes, albeit one that never strives for loftier goals. It is sappy and manipulative, but – given it aims to be sappy and manipulative – it is hard to treat that as a scathing criticism.