All Over Again Review — A Stage Passion

By Laurie Delaire

Gregory, Joseph Fuoco, is an aging musician who dropped his passion to focus on his wife Victoria, Constance Reshey, and son Adam, Mahdi Shaji, years ago.

Regular visitor of the Bus Stop Music Café alongside his best friend Luis, David Andro, he likes to spend his evenings there listening to multiple people share their talents on open mic nights, and with the unspoken promise that maybe one day he’ll find the inspiration and courage again to be among the people on stage.

Written and directed by Josh McGovern, All Over Again is an uplifting drama about finding strength and inspiration even when it seems that it is too late to try again.

Most of the film is spent inside the café, watching small bits of slam poetry or music performances that remind us again and again how brave the people on stage are, how different their talent can be and how inspiring this accepting open night atmosphere is.

These moments clearly inspire Gregory too, just like the strong support of his best friend, wife and son that lead to a beautiful and climactic ending.

The film has some hiccups on the way to that great ending though, the major issue being the editing. Transitions between scenes are most of the times very clumsy, especially for the flashbacks that appear and disappear too abruptly and don’t fit well within the scenes they are in.

The short film as a whole would also have benefited from a lot of cuts here and there to make the runtime shorter; it is only seventeen minutes long, but the story could have easily fit into something much smaller with as much, if not greater efficiency.

Josh McGovern himself edits his films and his next work after this one, Hush, is perfectly edited, showcasing a great improvement as inspiring as the subject matter of All Over Again.

Originally published at www.ocmoviereviews.com on October 15, 2018.