Plenty of films have covered the “rising star” story, including of course the highly overrated Lady Gaga/Bradley Cooper version of A Star is Born from last year (and the three prior versions of that story.) But few have done the story from as unique a perspective as Wild Rose, currently playing at an art house near you.

What is it about?

Wild Rose follows the story of Rose-Lynn, a country singer in Glasgow, Scotland. Yup, you read that right: a Scottish country singer. As the film opens, she’s being released from prison, having served a year on a minor drug charge. She returns to her home to reunite with her mother and two young children, 8-year-old Wynnona and 5-year-old Lyle. As she struggles to readjust to post-prison life, she tries to keep her real dream alive: to escape from Glasgow and travel to Nashville to become a country singer.

How Is It Different from A Star is Born?

While the “young talent searching for her big break” theme is basically the same, everything else about Wild Rose is different.

For starters, Rose-Lynn doesn’t need a man to save her. In fact, she doesn’t need a man at all. While she briefly reconnects with a boyfriend immediately upon her release from jail, that connection is clearly just, uh, scratching an itch, as the boyfriend only reappears briefly later in the film.

Instead, Rose-Lynn begins cleaning the house of a wealthy woman in town, who discovers her rather incredible singing voice and decides to send her to London to connect with a BBC disc jockey who, according to Rose-Lynn herself, is the only other person in Britain who understands country.

I don’t want to get into spoilers here, but I will say that Wild Rose also manages to avoid all of the tired cliches that made up 99% of Star.

How is the music?

I’ll admit here that I’m not exactly country music’s biggest fan. So I went in with some mild trepidation. And though I won’t be rushing out to buy the soundtrack, I have to say that the music was incredible. Jessie Buckley, who stars as Rose, really does have quite a singing voice, and she easily carries the many scenes in which she has to pelt out a tune.

There’s early awards talk for Buckley, and I hope it turns out to be more than that.

What about the rest of the performances?

The acting throughout is excellent. Julie Walters in particular stands out as Rose’s mother, who had to raise her grandkids while her daughter was behind bars. Now, with her daughter out but struggling to find a way to balance being a mother with pursuing her dreams, Walters’s character has to balance being there for her daughter and being there for her grandchildren.

Is the movie good for kids?

Yes. The movie is rated R, and although the MPAA says it’s for “language throughout, some sexuality and brief drug material,” it’s really only the language that is pervasive. The drug material part involves the fact of Rose-Lynn’s incarceration, and the “sexuality” part is presumably the aforementioned post-prison hook up (which features no nudity at all).

That said, there is a lot of language, including just about every swear word there is. So if it bothers you for your kids to hear that, stay away. If, however, you want them to see a movie about pursuing your dream, making adult decisions about the realism of the dream, and the need to make sacrifices as an adult, then it’s worth overlooking the bad words and taking the kids. Especially, I might add, girls.

Should I see the movie in the theater or wait for video?

I always get asked this, and it’s tough for me to answer, because in my eyes every movie should be seen in the theater. But I can recognize that if you have a big enough TV and decent sound system, not putting up with the idiots who show up to movies just to talk with their friends (because, tragically, there is of course nowhere else in the world one can talk to friends) can be appealing. And so yes, Wild Rose will be just as good at home as it was in the theater.

So, best movie of 2019?

Not quite. Wild Rose is very, very good, but it does have a few issues. First, there were times when it felt like too much of the movie was left on the cutting room floor. I don’t generally like the trend to longer movies – in fact, part of why my friend and I chose Rose over Midsommar is because the former was a full half hour shorter – director and editor need to not focus so much on keeping things short that they sacrifice plot points. In particular, the sequence where Rose travels to London left a lot of questions unanswered.

Still, that and a few other somewhat minor quibbles keep the movie from being as great as it could have been, it’s still a very enjoyable film.

It’s too bad Rose doesn’t have the budget or star power behind it that Star did, since this is the chasing-your-musical-dreams movie that should get all of the attention.