Movie review: False tone hit in the Singing Club

It's the same movie

every time.

This kind of hybrid between drama and comedy where the power of music unites and heals all wounds.

Actually, it's also the same movie, whether it's about a basketball team, a cheerleader or a breakdance crew (but it always gets nicer when it comes to a choir, lex: Pitch perfect).

A motley bunch tussles together, must learn to cooperate and eventually overcome some kind of challenge that generates applause and lands in various personal and collective life lessons.

The song club is a predictable copy of a copy of a copy.

With some notable differences.

The reality-based

story takes place on a military base in England where the wives have been left behind after their husbands (and a woman) left for service in Afghanistan.

Kate (Kristin Scott Thomas) has lost her son in the war and starts a choir to activate the rest of the wives.

Lisa (Sharon Horgan), who has the ultimate responsibility for leisure activities, is not very pissed but can be persuaded.

Soon, the choir's singing lessons become a tug of war between Kate and Lisa, where the former's rigid music school style irritates the latter, who gets the rest of the choir with the help of more fun pop hits.

The choir is

soon

by senior officers and must prepare for a big performance.

However, the situation becomes even more serious when reports come from the front about men who have died and others who have been sent home injured.

The Singing Club does not comment on the moral or political dimensions of the war at all.

That's okay, the film could still in theory be interesting as an in - depth psychological study of a group of women who are rarely portrayed on film.

Maybe the wives would need some therapy after their loved one died?

No, the easy-going and predictable feel-good format does not allow for trauma that cannot be cured with a little cozy singing.

The same song also helps everyone to wait for their departed husbands without a doubt.

A small splash of military propaganda that is difficult to rub away.

Director Peter

is perhaps best known for All or Nothing, where unemployed steelworkers in Sheffield began stripping for their livelihoods.

Like the Singing Club, the film was about people in a precarious situation, but where deep class divisions functioned as a dramatic engine.

The singing club should be even darker but the tone hit is so false that everything bursts.