Critic Reviews

Heart and soul—those two concepts beaten to death by lyricists—suffuse every scene of this modest, perfect picture.

It’s catchy and touching, it weaves the music into the story with a spontaneity that can leave you laughing with pleasure, and it navigates an honest path from despair to belief, which is Carney’s disarmingly sweet calling card.

It’s almost unbelievable that Carney pulls off films like this, which could easily tip over into maudlin. Instead, the winning Flora and Son is an utterly irresistible emotional ear-worm.

Blending the hilarious and heartfelt, the tough and the tender, John Carney’s sweerheart of an Irish musical is something you’ll want to hold close.

Propelled by a funny, charismatic turn by Hewson (who infused such unpredictable energy in the terrific Apple TV Plus series “Bad Sisters”), Flora and Son is a feel-good movie that largely earns its sentimental uplift, one sick burn and soaring musical number at a time.

The perfect movie to curl up with on a rainy day, Flora and Son tells us that music is the tie that binds people together, whether they’re ex-lovers, potential partners, or a scared mother reaching out to her equally skittish son hoping he will reach back.

If you can walk away from a movie with a tune in your heart and a bounce in your step, then it’s safe to say that the film clicked in just the ways that were intended.

Hewson never sees her as some kind of tarty punchline – neither does Carney, and neither will the audience. You know all that stuff about “strong female characters” who are also “flawed” or “human” or whatever other insane word salad Hollywood is still requiring of its female leads? Here’s a real one.

That’s the beauty of what Carney has created here, a film that wraps you in and absorbs you with its loveliness and charm, to a point that you don’t want to leave its presence.

Hewson takes a flawed but good-hearted mess of a character and makes her sympathetic, likable and fully human.