Robbie Williams, who performed in Almaty last year, naturally included one of his most popular songs, ‘Angels’, in his concert. This is essentially the first big hit of his solo career, and its creation has a little-known backstory. Irish director and screenwriter John Carney has used this story as the basis for his film ‘It’s a Hit!’, which was released in Kazakhstan this week. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Kursiv Media.
In September 1997, Williams released his first solo album, ‘Life thru a Lens’. Despite three consecutive singles, sales were sluggish until December of that year, when producers, the label, and the artist decided to release a fourth single, ‘Angels’. This changed everything: 27 weeks after sales began, the album soared to number one, eventually becoming eight-times platinum in the UK with total sales of four million copies and spending 218 weeks on the chart. It is to ‘Angels’ that one of the most tender and touching scenes in Williams’ biopic ‘Better Man’ is set.
But there was a downside to the success. Irish musician Ray Heffernan claimed that he was the actual author of ‘Angels’. According to him, in 1996, Heffernan and Williams happened to hang out together in a pub, Ray sang his song to Robbie, and they even made a demo recording in a studio. I won’t reveal how it all ended in real life; I’ll just leave a link to Heffernan performing his version of ‘Angels’.
Now, let’s turn to the film ‘It’s a Hit!’. American Rick Power (Paul Rudd) was once the lead singer of the rock band ‘Octagon’, but while on tour in Dublin, he met Rachel, and then came marriage, a child, a house, bills… Now Rick is the lead singer of a wedding cover band, trying to perform his old songs, which no one really wants. At one wedding, Rick meets Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas), a former member of a once-popular boy band, who is preparing to release his first solo album and whose label demands fresh material and a potential hit.
Setting up an impromptu jam session in Danny’s luxurious hotel room, the two musicians, aided by beer, whiskey, and other excesses, share ideas and works-in-progress. Returning to Los Angeles, Danny realizes that the song he heard from Rick could, with proper production, become the breakthrough for his album and career. And it does! The wounded Rick, whom no one believes, tries to confront Danny, but Danny denies everything.
John Carney is one of the leading creators of musical films in modern cinema—not musicals, but musical films. His first independent work was the 2001 drama ‘On the Edge’ starring Cillian Murphy, but he gained real fame with ‘Once’ (2008 Oscar for Best Original Song), ‘Begin Again’, and ‘Sing Street’.
In ‘It’s a Hit!’, Carney repeats a technique he has used many times before: a duet between an actor and a musician on screen, a sentimental and touching story, a bit of humor, and lots of songs. It works well, though without the brilliance of his most successful works. Paul Rudd, star of the later seasons of ‘Friends’ and Ant-Man, improved his vocal skills and learned to play guitar for this role. Nick Jonas, one of the Jonas Brothers, already had film experience, and given the twists and turns of his own music career, he didn’t have to act much. Rudd and Jonas make an excellent on-screen pair, and Carney keeps the narrative parallel, trying not to make Danny Wilson a secondary character.
Danny has his own motives, his own truth, and his own beliefs about what is and isn’t acceptable. For a while, Carney doesn’t exactly excuse him, but tries—successfully—to show that Danny is a complex, doubting personality and, to some extent, a hostage to his past success.
In counterpoint, Rick’s character is naturally even more dramatic. Carney leads both his hero and the audience to doubt: did Rick really write the song, or is it his drunken delusion, fantasy, a result of resentment over his own creative failures, wishful thinking?
Picking up pace—quite slowly—in the first half, Carney delivers an excellent second half without falling into a overly saccharine ending. ‘It’s a Hit!’ could have ended in various ways—Carney chose, in my opinion, not the most obvious but a beautiful option. The film is unlikely to earn much at the box office, but a song nomination for a future Oscar is not out of the question.