Jon, a young wanna-be musician, discovers he's bitten off more than he can chew when he joins an eccentric pop band led by the mysterious and enigmatic Frank.
Frank is a peculiar pleasure, furiously funny from the start before drifting seamlessly into more sorrowful territory.
Dreams of rock stardom become a warped reality in this barking-mad but affecting comedy about the side-effects of being a non-conformist genius.
A glorious curveball: surreal, abstract, laugh-out-loud funny and quietly moving. And the ‘tunes’ – performed live by the cast and sung by Fassbender – are a knockout.
You don’t need to be a music fan to appreciate this movie’s intelligent hat-tip to music savants; Frank Sidebottom’s naive, scraggly-voiced, lo-fi pop never really engaged me. However, I did love Frank.
Lenny Abrahamson is a filmmaker with a nuanced sense of tone, and he handles the shift from surreal comedy to something deeper and more complex with a typically deft touch.
It offers thought-provoking material about fame and the connection between creative talent and mental stability, and there are a number of genuinely amusing moments littered throughout.
The film isn’t as funny as might have been expected and the final-reel revelations risk undermining its mystique. Its attitude toward the music business is hard to surmise. We are never sure if it is satire or a celebration of offbeat genius. And yet, for all its dissonances, Frank is provocative and affecting.
Frank works as satire, as memoir, as comedy bromance, but it works mostly because it is just so weird: an anti-Dumas fable about a man who never removes a fake head.
It is often hilarious but grows less engaging as it turns more serious and Frank’s eccentricity veers towards madness.
Given the set up, the conventionally sentimental ending feels like a cop out.
This is a film that earns its artistic credibility as it progresses. Great stuff.
While Frank may not be for everyone (just as Sidebottom, Beefheart and Johnston were never chart-toppers), for those who like their movies to dance to a different beat, it is something rather exceptional.
Frank Sidebottom and the man behind the mask
Michael Fassbender: Frank and me
Cameo, Edinburgh from Friday May 23, 2014, until Thursday May 29, 2014. More info: http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/
Edinburgh Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Friday June 13, 2014, until Tuesday June 17, 2014. More info: www.filmhousecinema.com