It’s Belfast in the 1970s, the time of the Troubles, when bloody conflict decimated the city, shutting it down. But unlike his friends who take up arms, uncompromising rebel and music lover Terri Hooley decides to open a record shop on the most bombed half-mile in Europe – and he names it Good Vibrations.
But it’s only when he discovers local punk band The Outcasts – and, hot on their heels, Derry’s favourite sons The Undertones – that he really finds his calling.
Smartly constructed, combining archive material with dramatic episodes, Good Vibrations is an impassioned, funny and likable myth-making comedy. Led by actor Richard Dormer whose wry, sly and sweetly sarcastic turn highlights Hooley’s inner strength and refusal to compromise his love for rock’n’roll. Celebrating the music of the time, the film dares to make an unfashionable case that pop music matters, that it can change lives, that it can be transcendent.