A true story from Northern Ireland about Belfast's apolitical and burgeoning punk rock scene during The Troubles of the early 1970s, Good Vibrations at first comes across as one of those biopics marred by too much cinematic sheen and gloss: a shiny collection of un-lived-in locations and starchy costumes given little life by characterisations built on bad haircuts and long-expired pop culture lingo.
While the film doesn't completely transcend those shortcomings, it smartly blurs them into the background, wrapping its focus and energy around a warm and effusive performance from its lead, Richard Dormer, as historical protagonist Terri Dooley, and by splicing the story's chapters with deft appropriations of archival footage, producing, as a consequence, a wonderful, whiskey-soaked sense of irony, of horror and, often, of pure silliness about those indeed Troubled times.
Where the film's narrative excels is in its refusal to posit Dooley as someone morally tired of the civil warfare and looking, like a care worker, to give vocation to the impressionable local youth straddling a dangerous, neutral line. Things are greyer than that, and instead Dooley is shown stumbling into the punk scene, investing un-smartly with his money, and variously making deep, unexpected inroads into the industry, and never much profit. The man, we're shown, in all, is just being hopeful, and incredibly kind, during a strange and difficult time.
