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It doesn’t take a scientific study to prove the effects that music can have on listeners. All it takes is a powerful film score—or the energizing music at a sporting event—to understand that music can whip a crowd into a frenzy or soothe a troubled child or bring focus on a busy day. But in Coda, a musician looks outside his music to find peace.
Coda stars Patrick Stewart as Henry Cole, a world-famous pianist whose struggle with grief and loss has led to a debilitating case of stage fright. After years of locking himself away, refusing to perform, he’s finally returning to the stage, though his fear of playing in front of a crowd that he believes watches him solely because of the looming disaster makes it difficult for him to move forward. But then he meets Helen Morrison (Katie Holmes), a journalist and former pianist who sees his fear and helps him move beyond it.
With its classical score, its noteworthy cast, and its dramatic story of loss and depression and renewal, this musical drama certainly seems like a strange release for the Movie Dead Zone of January. In fact, it seems more like an Award Season release: the kind of film that audiences would find moving and powerful.
Unfortunately, though, Coda fails to live up to that Award Season level of success. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have its highlights and its moving moments. Patrick Stewart is undeniably charming as the gifted musician who finds himself lost in the grief and loneliness that has led to the kind of fear that could end his career. But the character keeps his emotions so closed off that it isn’t always easy to connect with him.
Katie Holmes, meanwhile, seems completely out of place in her role. Not only may the stars’ 38-year age difference give viewers an uneasy feeling as the characters’ business relationship turns into a friendship that starts to hint at more, but Holmes seems to be trying to play the role even younger. She smiles too much, tries too hard to be girlish. And the result is a relationship that feels about as authentic and natural as Holmes’s ill-fated marriage to Tom Cruise—made even more perplexing by her awkward narration.
The lesson to be learned here is that, when a film that seems like an Award Season drama skips over the season and shows up in January, there’s most likely a very good reason for the release date. Coda may have a charming star and a beautiful classical score, but its overall awkwardness places it firmly in its Movie Dead Zone release date.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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