How Did This Get Made? strikes again. Grand Piano is a film I have never heard of, despite it being less than ten years old and starring Elijah Wood and John Cusack. Also, it was written by Damien Chazelle of Whiplash and La La Land fame, though before he made those two much more popular films. Once I watched it, I realized why this was buried and forgotten: it’s silly as shit, but not on purpose.
I just want to work through the premise of this crazy movie, because it amused me to no end. Typically, I’m not one to pick apart the plot of a film. I try to suspend disbelief, especially if the story is engaging. But with Grand Piano, the story is distractingly inept.
SPOILERS ahead, but you should still just read this instead of watching the movie.
In Grand Piano, Elijah Wood plays a famous pianist who messed up a show and has been semi-retired for five years. His movie star wife encourages him to come back and perform a concerto in honor of his now-deceased mentor on said mentor’s titular grand piano. We also find out (but only if you’re paying close attention) that the mentor was rich, but his fortune is lost. We’ll get back to that later.
Wood is nervous as can be as he is constantly reminded of his past failure before the show. It’s fucking weird. It’s like this film takes place in some alternate universe in which people still give a fuck about pianists. We never find out what exactly happened at this disastrous past performance, but unless he somehow ended up nude and defecating into the piano, I can’t imagine it was truly that memorable (and now you know what it would take for me to remember a concerto). Anyway, Wood is nervous, but he finally starts to play.
A few pages into the performance, he notices some notes within the music telling him to play perfectly or he will die. It turns out a sniper has a gun pointed at him, laser sight and all. This is kind of silly, but so far, whatever; it’s a movie. After seeing the laser sight and the notes, Wood decides to just get up mid-performance and go check his phone in the dressing room.
I know nothing about music, but I can’t imagine there is a piano concerto in existence that allows for such a break in the piano part of the performance that would allow the pianist to leave the stage for a few minutes. Why not just have Wood learn about the situation in the dressing room? But okay, go on, you increasingly stupid movie.
To make sure Wood stays on task, the sniper has texted Wood a picture of Wood’s wife. He’s also left him an earpiece, so he can talk to him throughout the performance. He tells him that not only will he kill him, but he will also kill his wife if Wood doesn’t perform perfectly. To make sure Wood knows he isn’t fucking around, the sniper shoots a whole into the stage. Now, movie silencers don’t really exist, but I can accept that part, but for no one to notice that someone has fired a bullet into the stage is a bit too much. But…okay.
Before I move on, let’s consider the earpiece. So you need a guy to play the piano perfectly, right? How is screaming threats directly into his ear going to help with that? I wouldn’t be able to type this stupid article right now if I was wearing an earbud with a podcast playing. I can’t imagine trying to perform an “impossible” piece of music while some psycho screams about killing my wife. I get it, they got Cusack so we need to hear his voice a lot, but still, what a dumbass idea.
So Wood goes back to playing and a lot of filler happens involving his sister-in-law’s husband (does that make him a brother-in-law?). A few silly things happen with a cell phone, and Bill from Bill and Ted kills both of them. I told you; this film is pretty wacky.
After the filler, we finally figure out what this sniper is up to: he is a locksmith who designed a special lock for the dead mentor. The literal key to the mentor’s missing fortune is in the piano and can only be unlocked if a nearly impossible piece of music is played perfectly.
At one point the sniper claims this plan is three years in the making, but why? If he’s able to infiltrate this high profile concerto, then why couldn’t he just gain access to the dead mentor’s piano and slowly play the music himself? Okay, the movie is less cinematic if that happens. But just make it clear that this has to happen this way. Have the sniper say the piece of music must be played within a certain amount of time or something.
Also, if the sniper is able to hatch this plan, could he not have also just kidnapped Wood and taken him to the piano or something? Or could he just smash the piano to pieces and look for the key? It’s not a fucking safe, after all. It’s made out of wood! There are just too many other options that make more sense than what actually happens in this movie.
I guess it’s the “plan” line that bothers me the most. If the sniper had said that he had been “waiting” three years for this moment, then I’m fine with it. But to make all this stupid shit a part of a plan is laughable.
Time to finish this nonsense up. Wood intentionally fucks up the last note, but for some reason the sniper doesn’t follow through with his threats. Instead, he shows up in person (it’s John Cusack for some reason!) and there’s a silly fight that ends with Cusack crashing into the piano and Wood falling to the ground…breaking his leg. (And he had been told to “break a leg” at least five times earlier in the movie.)
As the bodies are being taken away, Wood goes to the piano (which is already loaded into a moving truck despite being a part of a crime scene) and plays the music properly, and he gets the key. So now he has access to a fortune he doesn’t need since he seems to be doing okay, and his wife is a movie star. The end.
I don’t have much more to add (aside from my random notes below). Movies like this just surprise me sometimes. There’s a lot of talent and money involved, yet no one asked some very basic questions about the script that could have been fixed fairly easily. I don’t get that. But at least all the nonsense made the movie slightly entertaining for me, but for all the wrong reasons.
Random Thoughts
It's kind of like Speed…on a piano. Or Phone Booth…on a piano.
The moving company in this is called Munson & Grandsons. So it skipped a generation?
John Cusack is credited as Clem, but you never hear this name during the movie. I'm not calling him that.
I know nothing of piano concertos, but I'm still sure there's a ton of shit that happens in this that would never happen at one, and that's not even counting the whole guy threatening to shoot the pianist thing.
The 90 minute run time consists of 16 minutes of opening and closing credits, thankfully.
This fucking director moves his camera around more nonsensically than Michael Bay.
The texting through the music pages is up there with The Departed for most impressive surreptitious texting in film history.
Bill from Bill and Ted is in this (his first role in years), and he snaps a dude's neck and slits a woman's throat in this. This movie is truly bizarre.
Damien Chazelle (Whiplash and La La Land) wrote this. I'm not the biggest fan of his more popular work, and this film is evidence that he's a fraud.
There's a truly ridiculous subplot in which a janitor sees Wood throw a score to the ground, which prompts the janitor to give Wood not just one, but two disapproving head shakes (just to make sure that any moron dumb enough to watch this knows this will mean something later). When Wood tracks down the janitor later, he is throwing the score into an incinerator. Why the fuck is there an incinerator at this place?
I love the villain's mindset: I need this guy to get the key, so during the most important part of the music, I'm going to start screaming at him and telling him I'm going to kill his wife. That'll help him not to fuck up.
The villain claims Wood is going to find "pieces of [his] wife's skull in box seat 5." He says this exact line to him twice. He’s already established that he knows where she is sitting. Why keep bringing up the specific seat?
This is one of those movies in which I keep thinking the main character is going to wake up at the end or something because no way this is meant to be real…but it is.
He literally breaks his leg at the end. Fuck this movie.
Why do Elijah Wood and Kerry Bishe need those foil blankets at the end? They weren't found in the woods. And why are they outside at all?
I watched this on YouTube, and I don't know what's going on there, but a lot of the comments are very positive about this movie. Those are bots or something, right? Right?
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