All Together Now

An American film about a young woman. Amber is in her final year at school. She sings, works in the theatre club, volunteers at a care home and helps at an animal shelter. Everyone around her knows her as cheerful. Nobody knows the rest: she and her mother live on a school bus. Her mother cleans for a living, they cannot pay rent, and the bus belongs to the company her mother works for. Amber keeps the arrangement going. She gets up early, uses the school showers, tells nobody, and plans everything alone. A conservatory audition comes up; a scholarship could change her life. Then there is a loss and the whole balance she built comes apart. From there the film is about learning to accept help. Amber helps everybody and cannot take a hand held out to her; that is the real subject. The source is a novel by Matthew Quick. Auliʻi Cravalho plays Amber and sings the songs herself. Justina Machado, Fred Armisen, Carol Burnett and Rhenzy Feliz are in the cast. Brett Haley directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes emotional drama aimed at younger viewers. Who it is not for: anyone looking for restraint; the film uses its emotional cues very plainly and shows poverty far too clean.