As a documentary about barbershop quartet competitions, you can file American Harmony (2009) under the sub-genre of “I can’t believe it’s not a Christopher Guest movie!” I can’t say barbershop quartet is my favourite type of music, but you get all the different people devoted to the ole timey stylings, from the fans to the vocal coaches to the performers, all of whom take it very seriously indeed. A lot of the humour comes from the sense of competition and athlete-level attitude to harmonising old standards like ‘Powder Your Face With Sunshine’ or ‘When My Sugar Walks Down The Street.’ We follow two groups. There’s Max Q, the acclaimed and beloved favourites, a crew of all-stars who are driven to take the top prize after coming second for several years in a row. Then there’s OC Times, the young hotshots who believe they bring “sex appeal” to the form; when they bust out a tune together to a waitress who’s serving them, that’s an ultimate CRINGE moment. Another team, Vocal Spectrum, perform ‘I Wanna Be Like You’ from The Jungle Book in the finals and we see one of the seasoned old dogs from Max Q ruefully shake his head, “How things have changed.” My favourite scene is a passionate vocal coach advising a member of Vocal Quartet that when he momentarily closes his eyes while singing, “you shut us off” and then proceeds to use a “shadowbox” analogy about connecting to an audience (“You’ve got to pow, pow, pow..” mimes boxing). I would have never heard about American Harmony except for Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster recommending it (one of Wurster’s character on The Best Show, Zachary Brimstead Esq, is a barbershop singer) – the closing credits bit feels like one of their ‘list’ comedy routines. Available to stream on Kanopy. Welcome to a world of gelled-tip hair and big satin suits. Very entertaining. Recommended.
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