MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TMATOES:
Based on writer, director and star Rudy Mancuso, Música is a coming-of-age love story that follows an aspiring creator with synesthesia, who must come to terms with an uncertain future, while navigating the pressures of love, family and his Brazilian culture in Newark, New Jersey.
REVIEW:
Rudy Mancuso has had interesting careers. He’s been a singer, puppet master, and online short filmmaker. His debut film Musica, which he cowrote with Dan Lagana, is a delightful comic romp about a character who suffers from synesthesia that combines all three into the plot. The dude can’t stop hearing music in the processes of ordinary life. As a result he’s very much attention deficit order around most people. Every room he enters and public space he visits has its own score and dance number to be discovered and conducted. He thinks and sees short term, a problem when he has a marriage minded girlfriend, Haley (Francesca Reale).
Mancuso has created the perfect film for his passions. His puppets look like him. At night, when he’s alone he creates sketches that are mini therapy sessions. In the daytime he busks with them on the subway platform. For the most part he’s a pretty passive guy, absorbed in his musical synesthesia. An early musical sequence has him creating dance and song from a boisterous park of people playing checkers, basketball and Double Dutch jump ropes.
Musica is a tidy and decidedly different coming of age story. The plot revolves around a triangle of important women in his life: his college girlfriend (Reale), an understanding fishmonger- Isabella (Camilia Mendes) and his bossy but loving and understanding matchmaking mother- Maria (his real life mom, Maria Mancuso). His only significant friend is a Shawarma food truck operator- Anwar (JB Smoove) who gives unreliable advice and gets mischievous when he’s drunk.
The internet was Mancuso’s on the job training. Virality is a good indicator of what works and doesn’t – and how to make the most of a low budget. His tools are his Chaplin-like timing (they even share the same hair) and his preference for practical effects over CGI. In Musica, Mancuso uses visual stunts to call attention to his character’s creative process. The way he uses every day objects to generate enchanting music and choreography are worth watching again just to admire the cleverness and execution.
The technical showstopper is a single-take spin through Rudy’s attempt to date both Haley and Isabella simultaneously. The camera stays with him through the huge studio space where rolling sets, painted backdrops and other actors waltz in and out of the frame. Also special, is the way Musica honors small acts of ingenuity- things like using song fragments that quit after a stanza. Even the abrupt and incomplete ending seems fitting for the character
Musica gets a 3.5/5 or a B+. It’s streaming on Amazon Prime.
CREDITS:
Directed by
Written by
- Rudy Mancuso
- Dan Lagana
Produced by
Starring
- Rudy Mancuso
- Camila Mendes
- J.B. Smoove
Cinematography
Edited by
Melissa Kent
Music by
- Rudy Mancuso
Production
companies
- Amazon MGM Studios
- Wonderland Sound and Vision
- Big Indie Pictures
- Shots Studios
Distributed by
Release dates
- March 13, 2024(SXSW)
- April 4, 2024(Prime Video)
Running time
91 minutes[1]
Country
United States
Languages
- English
- Portuguese
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