Chances are, you’ve heard of the Everly Brothers, but it’s a safe bet that you’ve never heard of the Emerson Brothers. Based on the true story of brothers Donnie (Casey Affleck) and Joe (Walton Goggins) Emerson, a musical duo who bloomed early but whose ship came in much, much later, “Dreamin’ Wild” is a low-key, rather dull, yet paradoxically well-acted music movie with a heartwarming message.
Growing up in Washington state on the family farm in the 1970s, their teenage selves—young Donnie (Noah Jupe) and Joe (Jack Dylan Grazer)—have a passion for making music. Donnie, the main talent, is a gifted guitar player and singer-songwriter. Older brother Joe, their drummer, enjoys the creativity but is basically along for the ride.
If You Build It, Record Sales Will Happen
Farmer-dad Don Sr. (Beau Bridges) financially supports his boys by building them a fairly sophisticated recording studio “out past the cornfields where the woods got heavy,” replete with red shag rug on the walls as sound dampeners. He bequeaths them time to create music, along with an excellent pep talk about giving it their best shot.
The boys released their only record, “Dreamin’ Wild,” in the late 1970s. It was a remarkably beautiful album that, ostensibly due to lack of marketing chops, just couldn’t find an audience and was quickly destined for the one-hit-wonder, clearance-bin fate of the majority of America’s musical-career attempts. Dad went all in financing everything for his boys’ success and took a major hit when things didn’t work out.
Fast-forwarding to the present day, Donnie’s now married to Nancy (Zooey Deschanel). Donnie and Nancy gig together when possible (she’s a drummer), playing weddings and bars and juggling a fair amount of stress trying keep their recording studio in business. Donnie’s now focused on raising a family, but underneath, the music still burns.
A 2nd Chance Knocks
Matt Sullivan (Chris Messina) is a record executive heading up an indie label whose mission is to find lost nuggets of musical gold and give these unsung records new life. Pitchfork music magazine called the Emerson Brothers’ album “a godlike symphony to teen-hood” (riffing on a Brian-Wilson-of-the-Beach-Boys phrase).
So when Sullivan tracks down the long-forgotten duo, he happily informs the family that the boys’ long-dead album has been brought back to life. The boys—now middle-aged men—have been resurrected as an unearthed and buzzed-about underground band, and Sullivan is convinced that success, at long last, is ripe for the picking.
Brother to Brother
Everyone’s obviously ecstatic except Donnie, although he plays along. Donnie’s got a lifetime of frustrated-musician demons he’s dealing with. He resents his lesser-talent brother, who gave up music long ago, falling all over himself with glee at the sudden windfall of success, while he, Donnie, had been toiling in the trenches for decades.
Donnie forgets, however, that Joe gave up music in the same way that Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in “Titanic” gave up the life raft to Kate Winslet’s character and sank into the freezing abyss: Joe wanted Donnie’s solo career not to be hindered by his own insignificant talent.
And so Affleck’s character’s displeased outbursts regarding getting the band back together eventually grate a little bit, not due to Affleck’s performance but because of a slightly subpar script. Thankfully, Joe gets his just due and actually becomes the hidden gem and the true heart of “Dreamin’ Wild.”
