Metacritic reviews

Few films are ever as enjoyable and endearing as Sing Street.

What makes Sing Street such a joyously entertaining film (besides the songs) is that it thinks the best of its characters, and it presents them the way they’d like to think of themselves.

Did you like The Commitments? Did you like We Are the Best!!? Well, Sing Street isn’t as good as either of those two, but it’s still pretty terrific.

Sing Street is far more boisterous and certainly funnier than Once, but it remains in a minor key; “finding happiness in sadness,” is how one character puts it.

Like an updated The Commitments in rouge (liberally applied), Sing Street nails the details.

The truest and most tearduct-tugging relationship here is that between Conor and his lank-haired college-dropout brother, played with spaced-out warmth and wistful good humor by the ever-likeable Reynor.

While Sing Street is often infectious its its scraggly energy, one wishes Conor’s other band members were slightly more fleshed-out, which would make their already-absorbing performances sing even more.

The young nonprofessional actors are a fresh, natural bunch, even if the bandmembers might have benefited from more individual character development.

John Carney’s 1980s-set Sing Street is like a barnstorming tribute group. It’s crowd-pleasing, heart-warming, hits all the right notes, and is eager to please.

All traces of grit from John Carney's earlier films have been scrubbed away in favor of relentlessly crowd-pleasing slickness.