Starting this Friday, the Vietnam-set, R&B-infused drama The Sapphires will open at the Art Theater Co-op in downtown Champaign. The film, starring comedian Chris O’Dowd (Bridesmaids), charts the rise of a girl group made up of four Aboriginal Australian women who follow their dreams of music stardom all the way to Vietnam, where they sing for American troops.
The New York Times A. O. Scott said of the film: “The movie itself, directed by Wayne Blair from a script by Keith Thompson and Tony Briggs, is… a solid, stirring song sung with more sincerity than polish. (It is inspired by a true story; one of the real Sapphires, Beverley Briggs, is Mr. Briggs’s mother.) But the raggedness of “The Sapphires” can’t be separated from its exuberant charm. Like the Sapphires themselves, the film is determined to muscle its way into your heart, which would have to be a lump of gristle to resist it.”