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The real world needs more dogged folks willing to tilt at windmills. But movies often don't do their stories justice, and that has happened again here.
Pimentel's persistence and eventual triumph over prejudice and discrimination is a story worth telling, if only on a shoestring.
This offbeat biopic is driven by Ron Livingston's engaging performance as Richard Pimentel, a gifted public speaker who lost his hearing in the Vietnam war and then spearheaded the disability rights movement in the U.S.
This is a nice little well-meaning idea for a movie, but even with three writers on the payroll, it never really catches fire.
I wanted to like this film
All inspiring stuff, but Music Within is strictly by the numbers, even down to the predictable mood-setting period soundtrack numbers
Low on drama, but funny, with interesting characters, good performances and is uplifting without being too sweet.
It's just too bad that the pious treatment given the deserving Pimentel never translated into a more engaging film.
With period songs galore to tell you exactly what's going on inside protagonist Richard Pimentel (Ron Livingston), you hardly need plot or dialogue.
It gives me no pleasure to report that the [Richard] Pimentel biopic Music Within plays like a well-intentioned TV movie.
Salawich's film is entertaining and leaves you with warm feelings from learning about this man who turned adversity into good for so many others.
If you're looking for one-dimensional, uplifting pap, Music Within fits the bill. It's watchable. Pimentel is obviously a really interesting guy, and it's a shame his tale wasn't told with a bit more flair.
...an agreeable though entirely uneven piece of work...
When the subject is not well-known, and the film about his life is unremarkable, the whole thing starts to feel like an exercise in futility.
Both Pimental and the audience would have been better served if his life were told as a PBS documentary.
The low-budget Music Within may not entirely work on the outside, but at its core beats a very funny, very smart and very moving heart of gold.
This is a heroic tale in many respects, but it's handled here with the heavy hand of television-quality hagiography.
It hits some of the right notes, but at the wrong time and the overall effect is a song out of tune.
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