An effective commercial disability-drama about a teen who knows he's about to lose his hearing, Bennett Lasseter's The Ultimate Playlist of Noise would look quite a bit better if it didn't have such lousy timing: Compared to Darius Marder's smart and deeply affecting Sound of Metal, which started streaming last month (just in time to introduce awards-minded viewers to Riz Ahmed's brilliant performance), this film's by-the-book YA approach feels like the training-wheels version of going deaf.
The two pictures clearly expect to be seen by different audiences, but their proximity forces a viewer to re-ask old questions about stories that do this much pre-digesting of grief in pursuit of feel-good endings: Maybe a viewer who isn't mature enough.
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