Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

denis888 Tom Hanks is a real steamroller who goes well and mighty. He did many great movies and he seems to do no wrong. Yet, here he seemed to be all correct again, with this funny little film of a young band getting famous and then falling apart due to several factors all gotten together at one place. Here, the story seems to be OK, yes, as a drummer I do support all those technical difficulties the band encountered and all those conflicts they had. Yes, the studio / TV / gig routines are shown pretty well. Yes, the band seems to be very real, they play as if the actors play all their parts themselves. Yes, Liv Tyler and Charlize Theron are gorgeous sexy ladies. Yes, the band is a very funny gang often. And then, many NO's follow. No, the characters do not endear or grab you by their struggles or triumphs. No, the love line does not seem to be deep or decent. No, the final conflict does not smack of being real and mundane. It seems that Hanks tried very hard to slide along the surface without diving any deeper. There is no deep slant drilling of main heroes, there's only some sweet light slight tiny touches upon their psyche. This is a light little teen comedy with a very large chunk of certain shallowness and naivety, seemingly all coming from blurred recollections of Mr. Hanks himself. Oh, and I am sorry but does Mr. Zahn not irritate with his character all through. This obvious shallowness of all four main heroes seems extremely annoying, and this fluffy-puffy sweetness of Liv's Faye leaves nothing but a cloy of too sweet candy. Where Hanks succeeded is in biting certain sides of TV / cinema routine. Where he fails is depicting band's true evolution. And oh, all those jazz sentiments, they are so out of place that one can only rub their eyes in utter shock. Yeah, the overall feeling of very lightweight teen pop comedy never left me. It was nice, it was sweet. Decent or deep it was not. My rating - 7 Nice try, but not more

SnoopyStyle It's 1964 Erie, Pennsylvania. Drummer Guy Patterson (Tom Everett Scott) chases flirtatious Tina Powers (Charlize Theron) and unhappily works at the family appliance store. Faye Dolan (Liv Tyler) is the girlfriend of Jimmy Mattingly (Johnathon Schaech) who leads a band with Lenny Haise (Steve Zahn), T. B. Player (Ethan Embry), and Chad (Giovanni Ribisi). They get Guy to join after Chad breaks his arm and come up with the name "Oneders" (supposedly pronounced Wonders). Guy's fast beats force the band to change their song "That Thing You Do" during a competition. The guys sign with manager Phil Horace living out of his camper. They go to Pittsburgh. Mr. White (Tom Hanks) signs them to Play-Tone Records and promptly changes the spelling of their name to The Wonders.This is very much the personification of the Tom Hanks and his sunshine personality. It is fun, mostly happy, deliberately light even when the movie touches on darker issues, and has a catchy tune. It's good that the song is catchy because the movie plays it a lot. The visual is immaculately perky 60s. This is a happy Disney version of an one-hit-wonder rock group. The actors are beautiful. This is not to say this is a blindly perky film. It doesn't dig too deeply in the darker corners.

WinterbornTM That Thing You Do! is the first motion picture directed by Tom Hanks (who also stars in the movie) and tells the story of the band The Wonders, who during the 60's had a one-hit wonder single, That Thing You Do!The story follows four friends from Erie, Pennsylvania who form a rock'n'roll band together called "The Oneders", who are later known as the "The Wonders". We follow along as they rise to success, promoting their new single all over the country and achieve national fame. As a director, Tom Hanks captures perfectly the style of the 60's and you're instantly transported back in that world. The clothes, the cars, the people, everything looks great to the last detail.The main character, Guy Patterson, is the drummer of the band and it's eerie (no pun intended) how much he channels a young Tom Hanks. In fact, at first, Hanks didn't even want him in the movie because he felt he looked too much like him, but his wife convinced him otherwise. The rest of the supporting cast includes Liv Tyler, as the girlfriend of the band's lead singer, Steve Zahn as the guitar player and Tom Hanks as the band's manager, Mr. White.This is a nice feel-good movie, perfect for a Sunday evening when you just feel like lying on the couch and enjoy a great movie. It doesn't stand out with too much, it's short and sweet. With this directorial debut, Hanks proves he's doing a great job as a director, shame he didn't more movies.

Sergeant_Tibbs In the mid-1990s, Tom Hanks was on the top of the world. He had just won two Oscars in a row and starred in the innovative phenomenon Toy Story. Frankly, he could do just about anything he wanted. So he went ahead and made his directorial feature film debut, a love letter to an adored era, the explosion of pop music in the 1960s. That Thing You Do is a pretty routine but charming flick like an alternate Beatles fame tale. However, the story takes a pretty straight trajectory. It rises, rises, rises, keeps rises without much interruption, then there's the fall, then soft landing then credits. It suffers from lack of meaningful conflict, instead just showing the cracks til the inevitable explosion within the band. It's okay for mild entertainment, just a little bland. Wish he chose a better lead than someone who just looks like him. Steve Zahn is the only zany highlight who livens the picture up. But it all hinges onto its title song, which is very catchy, if quite 90s. The disappointing thing about the film is it doesn't explore the joy of discovery in this early pop music. Instead, kids just nod when things feel right. It needed much more energy and confidence, but it's a generally inoffensive film.6/10