YouTuber, musician and comedian Rudy Mancuso adds a few more bars to his CV with music (now streaming on Prime Video), a light-hearted and charming coming-of-age film that he directed, co-wrote with Dan Lagana, composed the music for, and stars alongside Camila Mendes (riodale), Francesca Reale (Strange things), JB Smoove and Maria Mancuso, his mother in real life. “Based on a true story…unfortunately,” says the disclaimer on music, in which Mancuso plays a version of himself as a perpetually distracted college student in New Jersey with a talent for music and creativity, a loving but overbearing Brazilian mother, and a shaky romantic relationship while the promise of another hangs in the balance. Perspective: Can you really get your shit together? Rudy’s life might be easier if he didn’t see music everywhere he looked. Then again, maybe that’s what makes it unique.
MUSIC: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: Haley (Reale) is worried that Rudy (Mancuso) is distracted. They’re graduating soon and she wants to leave Ironbound, her neighborhood in Newark, get a place in New York City, buy a dog, and start their life together the way she sees it. But as Haley describes her expectations, Rudy transforms the restaurant where they sit into a choreographed sequence full of rhythmic punch and dynamic movement. He even plays some musical notes in the air next to Haley. This is the world she sees and hears, as he is constantly distracted or simply left behind by the real world Rudy lives in. When Haley drops him off at the restaurant, Rudy stays behind to have imaginary conversations with Diego, the star puppet of the shows he introduces to no one on the subway.
All Maria (Maria Mancuso), Rudy’s mother, wants is for her son to date a nice Brazilian girl. She even brings home the nieces and cousins of her coworkers at the salon. Rudy gets angry at this, but Maria says that she has no choice: “decisions don’t make themselves.” She is right, of course; Rudy is wandering around. He has a mind for music and puppetry, but no perseverance. He gets advice from his friend Anwar (Smoove), who runs a local food truck. But Anwar’s view of the world is full of opposites and doublespeak. And Diego backs him up, at least in spirit, but he also spits out some truths. “Everything is going to be okay, brother. Er, probably not…”
When Rudy meets Isabella (Mendes), it’s with a spark of cute energy and the sting of the cod slapping him in the face. The fish market where he works is a favorite of the Brazilian expat community in Newark, and Isabella and Rudy bond even more over its delicious dishes. coxinhas in the nearby park. But Rudy can’t turn off the music inside him. When he closes his eyes, the world becomes rhythmic. Basketball players, double jumpers, birds, traffic and voices: to him, it’s all E flats, melodies and scales. AND music, true to its title, frequently performs it with fantastically visual and frequently stomping dance numbers. It’s his life as a song, but Rudy doesn’t know the words to all the verses. And in his rush to make Isabella and Haley, as well as his mother, happy, Rudy risks returning to the puppetry and loneliness of his one-note life.
What movies will it remind you of? in the heights It also featured a slice of neighborhood life, a place where people are often found singing, dancing, or both. And as recent coming-of-age romantic comedies say, Honor Society is a standout, with Angourie Rice and Gaten Matarazzo circling each other amid some new wrinkles in the genre formula.
Performance worth seeing: Camila Mendes is a pleasant and solid presence in musicplaying a version of the wise free spirit whose philosophical nature and inherent belief in people inspires the main character’s attention, as well as imparting some important lessons.
Memorable dialogue: “Are you aware that you do this? Are you going somewhere? Not only is Rudy aware of her synesthesia and how it drags him into rhythmic daydreams, but she is so innate in the way she sees and hears the world that sometimes she cannot recognize what she has in front of her.
Sex and skin: Nothing here.
Our opinion: Rudy Mancuso is a nice blank space in the center of music, a continually distracted dreamer with a messy head of hair who nevertheless has two main abilities: he can direct the diegetic sounds of everyday life, and he attracts women who find his constant state of confusion charming. But as a first-time director, Mancuso is more focused. He lets his visual ambition run into a kind of fluid fantasy, with a simple bus-taking scene turning into a coordinated dance number full of found percussion. And later, once his frantic attempts to placate Haley while he was courting Isabella collapsed into a Jack-in-the-Box. Company of three-as a frame, music elevates a restaurant scene to controlled chaos in a single take, with both women demanding answers, their mother showing up at exactly the wrong moment, and even a wordless argument with the house pianist that occurs entirely through minor chords and knocks on glassware. The character Rudy’s inability to concentrate means that the narrative in music You may feel equally unfocused. But the film’s traditional coming-of-age romantic comedy beats are enhanced by the real rhythms and melodies of the music that constantly flows through it.
Our call: TRANSMIT IT. Rudy Mancuso marks his solid film debut with music, which flows visually and aurally thanks to the strength of its musical soul. Add a little rom-com precociousness and the whole thing becomes a coming-of-age kicker.
Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is a freelance writer and editor living in Chicago. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.
