Band Aid sticks to you with comedy, music, fighting, and making up. It’s all in the service of dealing with grief and pain. The film is funny and surprising and ultimately heartwarming.
Band Aid was written and directed by Zoe Lister-Jones. It also stars Zoe Lister-Jones as Anna. Anna is half of a troubled marriage, mired in endless fights.
Anna’s other half is Ben (Adam Pally). The chemistry between Adam Pally and Zoe Lister-Jones really works. They are terrific together whether they are fighting or singing or simply being a troubled couple.One night they accidentally discover that if they sing their complaints about one another, they can better say what they mean. So they decide to form a band and make their fights into songs.
Dave (Fred Armisen) is their neighbor. They think he’s weird. But they discover he plays the drums and ask him to join their band. They write a number of songs and start appearing at open mics.
Crazily enough, Dave turns out to have a beautiful home and two stunning best friends: Cassandra Diabla (Jamie Chung) and Crystal Vichycoisse (Erinn Hayes). He’s a surprising guy.
Zoe Lister-Jones has a ton of great pals from other shows she’s worked on. A bunch of them showed up in small roles in Band Aid, among them Susie Essman, Retta, Brooklyn Decker, Angelique Cabral, Colin Hanks, Jesse Williams, Daryl Wein, Chris D’Elia, and Ravi Patel. That created an unexpected little treat every now and then, but the film really belonged to the married couple trying to work their way through their problems.
Writing their woes into music helped them reconnect and possibly advance into getting things figured out. I suspected what was at the bottom of their troubles, but it wasn’t openly revealed into well into the film.
If, like me, you spend your time searching for women written and directed films, you’ll be happy to find this one. Okay, even if you don’t care a flip about who directs what, you’ll enjoy this film. I found it on Netflix, but it’s available in a number of other places.