“How do you think the movie playing out in your head is going to end?” asks Tom Donnelly, an abandoned son, to his ageing, rock-star father. It’s a gutsy moment for a film like Danny Collins, a film that, let’s face it, is wall-to-wall cliché. But there’s the old expression: it’s the singer, not the song. And Danny Collins the film, as well as Danny Collins the character, proves it to be true. There’s nothing resembling a surprise in this movie, but its simple tune works due to the quality of the performances.
Tom (Bobby Cannavale), the working-class father with a troubled daughter, pregnant wife and rare form of leukaemia, steals every scene he’s in, even when he’s up against Al Pacino flapping around like an overstuffed pelican as an absurd song-and-dance nostalgia act. Pacino, whose involvement in a project can sometimes be a red flag these days, plays to his strengths in ways not seen for years. His creatively washed-up but still filthy-rich 70s softcore rocker (think Neil Diamond or Billy Joel) is supposed to be something of a joke. The humiliation you’ll experience watching Pacino flop around on stage to “Sweet Caroline”-esque hits is intentional. This is an added and necessary layer not included in, say, Pacino’s 2013 film Salomé. Danny Collins’s fans may be past retirement – and gumming Twizzlers in the front row instead of hurling panties – but they still love him. Now all he has to do is get out of his rut.
At a party in his California mansion, after all the lingerie models have either left or passed out, Collins’s manager/father figure (Christopher Plummer, loving the role) gives him a birthday present. Years ago, John Lennon sent Collins a handwritten letter, which has been kept from him for decades. The content of the note shatters him. Had he received it when it was sent, he feels, his life wouldn’t be an empty parade of cocaine and mistresses. With that, he puts his calendar on hold and begins his Redemption Tour.
The first and only stop is Blue Collarsville, New Jersey, where he checks into a business hotel. He struts around the joint, acting like a matchmaker to the college kids working there, and commences to flirt with the manager (Annette Bening, channelling Diane Keaton to the point of litigation). He also sends for a Steinway piano, and begins writing new tunes for the first time in 30 years.
His approaches to the progeny he has long ignored, the result of a groupie tryst, are quickly rebuffed. But he befriends his kindly daughter-in-law (Jennifer Garner, who turns furrowed brows and crooked smiles into an entire character) and the granddaughter with ADHD. (This is the movie version of ADHD, by the way, so she’s just an adorable moppet who won’t stop talking.) At first they reject his generous overtures, but when the enormous tour bus pulls up to take them to a specialty school in Manhattan with a multiyear waiting list, the parents can’t say no. Collins is one step ahead of them, though. “Money doesn’t buy redemption, I’m still going to hell, so everybody wins.”
Danny Collins is the first film directed by Dan Fogelman, whose previous scripts run the gamut from Cars to Crazy, Stupid, Love to the underrated The Guilt Trip. He’s got the patter down, to the point that half the flirting Collins does with Bening’s divorced innkeeper is actually about their patter. And much like her character, you can try to rebuff his charms, but to do so is hopeless. Despite the predictable nature of this movie, and the unnecessary fealty it has to the John Lennon story beat (one derived from a true incident that bears little resemblance to this film), it finally gets to you. By the end – as father and son are awaiting medical-test results – damn it all if I wasn’t a complete emotional wreck. Oh, I hated myself, much as Cannavale’s Tom resented his father for interrupting his life after all these years, but I was also secretly glad he did.
• Danny Collins is on release in the US now and opens in the UK on 29 May
