Film

Sing Street

John Carney's love letter to teenage reinvention: a shy Dublin kid starts a band purely to impress a girl, and along the way discovers who he actually wants to be. It's funny, tender, drenched in synth-pop pastiche, and unashamedly romantic about the power of a good song and a bad haircut. Warm, propulsive, and built for anyone who ever formed a band to solve a personal crisis.

TMDb rating7.9

If you liked this

Almost Famous2000

Cameron Crowe's own coming-of-age-through-music story, following a teenager who talks his way onto tour with a rising rock band. Same wide-eyed wonder about what music can do to a life.

But It's more wistful than triumphant, and the pacing meanders through its two-hour runtime in a way Sing Street never does.

Almost Famous poster

The School of Rock2003

Jack Black at his most gloriously unhinged, teaching a class of uptight kids that music is a legitimate escape hatch from boring, disappointing adulthood. Pure, uncomplicated joy.

But It's broader and goofier, with none of Sing Street's ache — this is comedy first, coming-of-age second.

The School of Rock poster

The Commitments1991

Also Dublin, also a scrappy band assembled from nothing, also gorgeously funny about Irish working-class ambition and ego. The chaotic band-meeting scenes alone are worth it.

But Rowdier, sweatier, and less romantic — this is soul music and squabbling, not synth-pop and first love.

The Commitments poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

This Is England2007

Both films are about a boy without a stable father figure remaking himself through a scene — the clothes, the haircut, the borrowed swagger — led by an older brother-type he idolises. Sing Street's Brendan is generous where This Is England's Combo is a predator, but the mechanism, a kid assembling a self from someone else's record collection, is identical. This is what happens when that mentor is the wrong one.

Shane Meadows' story of a lonely, fatherless kid pulled into a subculture by an older, magnetic figure who reshapes how he dresses, talks, and sees himself. Music and clothes as identity, exactly like Cosmo's transformation — except here the mentor is dangerous rather than kind.

But It curdles fast and hard, moving from skinhead camaraderie into racism and violence with no warning and no comfort at the end.

This Is England poster

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Recommended by

The Banshees of Inisherin, Brooklyn, Billy Elliot, Almost Famous, The Commitments, CODA, The Greatest Showman, A Hard Day's Night, That Thing You Do!, Once, Belfast, Pitch Perfect