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83The film emerges as a powerful, even shattering look as music's power to unite where it once divided.
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75A drably directed yet terrifically affecting drama about family bonds, classic rock, and the human brain. It's sentimental, yet so honest and eccentric that it rises above schmaltz.
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75Unpretentious and unexpectedly moving.
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70In key spots, thanks to Simmons' brilliantly wounded gruffness and Pucci's nimble toggling act between vacancy and awakened spirit, The Music Never Stopped achieves an admirable poignancy about our emotional, healing relationship to the songs we love.
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70An effectively emotional look at the power of music therapy to trigger memories lost after brain surgery.
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70The novel premise and otherwise nuanced performances are enough to hold attention.
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60Often static and follows a familiar trajectory. Yet it has power, partly because Simmons does a fine job of showing how hurt Henry is that his taste didn't imprint on Gabe beyond grade school; what was their music became, simply, dad's music.
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50A medical drama that pays lip service to the healing power of music but never finds the rhythm.
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50The true wonder of this low-budget movie, however, is its acquisition of the rights to so much of the previously mentioned music. It's almost exclusively Dylan and the Dead, but damned if you won't be stopping for some Cherry Garcia ice cream on the way home.
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50The songs and a couple of strong performances are only good enough to make the film watchable, not exceptional.
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50The Music Never Stopped isn't exactly good, but it's definitely better than you fear it is when you reach the halfway mark.
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Mar 15, 201150In a rare leading role, character actor Simmons is saddled with the entirety of the film's diagrammatic emotional arc, briskly (and tediously) about-facing on matters of fatherhood, activism, and guitar rock, while a too-boyish Pucci is fatally unconvincing as a former band leader.
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40These kinds of disease-fueled dramas already tend to be soap-operatic, but Kohlberg isn't taking any chances; by the time father and son end up at a Dead show in matching tie-dyed outfits, the director has aggressively, insistently overplayed audience heartstrings like Jerry Garcia in a long-winded solo.