The Sparks Brothers is as entertaining as it is informative, and music lovers should leave the film both appreciating the Maels’ contributions to pop music and admiring Wright’s ability to tell their story. Furthermore, the folks who – like me – came into this project unaware of the band will, no doubt, spend a few hours digging through its rather impressive back catalog. Not every movie leaves me with new downloads in my music library, but this one certainly did.

Ragen, Parrish, PenaVega and the rest of the cast are charming enough, but some elements of the story are underdeveloped, while others batter the audience like a sledgehammer. One doesn’t watch Mighty Oak so much as he/she is manipulated by it. Some filmmakers – Steven Spielberg chief among them – can get away with this type of manipulation. But Spielberg is nuanced. With Mighty Oak, one can feel McNamara and Allen tugging at the heartstrings, and it’s more uncomfortable than effective.