<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Director: John Carney; Screenwriter John Carney; Starring: Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo, James Corden, Hailee Steinfeld, Adam Levine, Catherine Keener; Running time: 104 mins; Certificate: 15  While they don&amp;#039;t exactly fit the definition of an odd couple, there&amp;#039;s something compellingly weird about seeing Mark Ruffalo and Keira Knightley paired up on-screen. He&amp;#039;s all scruffy open heart, while she retains a kind of ethereal delicacy even in what&amp;#039;s probably her warmest and most relaxed performance to date. It&amp;#039;s this off-kilter combo, combined with an overarching sense of real passion for music, that gives John Carney&amp;#039;s Begin Again its rich, unassuming charm.  Knightley is aspiring singer-songwriter Greta, a British ex-pat who finds herself suddenly alone in New York after getting dumped by her douchey rising star boyfriend (Adam Levine). Dragged along to an open-mic night by musician friend Steve (a very funny James Corden), she plays a rough version of her own self-penned track, to a largely indifferent crowd. One face in that crowd is Ruffalo&amp;#039;s Dan, a down-and-out record label exec hovering on the brink of alcoholism. A witty early sequence sees him listening to one painfully generic song sample after another, growing more and more demoralised with every awful track. But Greta&amp;#039;s heartfelt ode to loneliness in the city has the elusive spark he&amp;#039;s missing, and his glazed eyes turn bright as he watches her play, already mixing the studio-polished track in his head.   What makes this different from the average ing\u00C3\u00A9nue story is that Greta&amp;#039;s not especially interested in being discovered. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not Judy Garland off a bus looking for stardom,&amp;quot; she snaps, as Dan pursues her with puppy-dog enthusiasm while somehow still managing to talk down to her. But the pair gradually bond over a new collaboration that sees them record an entire album in locations around Manhattan after being denied studio space, city noise and all blending into the music.  The songs, then, are make-or-break, and the track list Carney and Gregg Alexander have produced is a triumph: mellow summer pop and wistful, stripped-down ballads arranged around Knightley&amp;#039;s surprisingly alluring vocals. While Levine is the only professional singer among the cast, his tracks are ironically the most forgettable contributions, and the film&amp;#039;s third act suffers as a result of over-using his one-note character.  More than eight years since the release of Carney&amp;#039;s debut film Once, its Broadway and West End adaptations are now going strong. It&amp;#039;s a tough act to follow, and while Begin Again lacks a throughline as potent as the central unrequited romance in Once, there is a careful thematic arc at work in Carney&amp;#039;s screenplay.   Both Greta and Dave are stuck in the past: Greta&amp;#039;s clearly been in the shadow of Levine&amp;#039;s more confident Dave throughout their relationship, and once he&amp;#039;s out of the picture her music is still all about him. Meanwhile Dan is an old-school A&amp;amp;R man, so resistant to change that his own company is leaving him behind. As they inadvertently coax one another into moving on, Knightley and Ruffalo&amp;#039;s sweet and spontaneous chemistry blossoms.  Less effective is Dan&amp;#039;s relationship with his daughter (Hailee Steinfeld), who&amp;#039;s a thinly-drawn teenage stereotype - she dresses trashy to get attention, until Greta takes her under her wing - while Catherine Keener is fun but mostly wasted as his rock journalist ex-wife. It&amp;#039;s in these dynamics that the screenplay&amp;#039;s triteness comes through, whereas everything involving the central couple is so winning that you simply don&amp;#039;t notice.  Nevertheless, Begin Again is a captivating and uplifting indie musical, its specific loveliness embodied in the very modern, very romantic midpoint sequence where Greta and Dan walk the streets of Manhattan all night, listening to music on shuffle together through a split headphone jack.   "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/review/a583082/begin-again-review-keira-knightley-stars-in-beguiling-musical-romance/>