I disliked all musicals from earliest childhood until well into my 30s, for the same all-too-familiar reasons that everyone else mentions. My wife, with whom I have always agreed about most other sibjects, was always a big fan, and eventually I came to understand her point of view. I now can enjoy all the best-remembered musical classics (Fred-and-Ginger, anything with Gene Kelly, Gigi, etc., etc.); the bonus is that, to me, many of these older films are completely NEW, since I avoided them like the plague throughout the first half of my life...

Then, there are the more recent rock-era musical films. I enjoy all those late-50s-early-60s "exploitation" films like "Rock Around the Clock," "The Girl Can't Help It," even "Hootenanny Hoot"... And who will say a bad word about "Hard Day's Night"? Or even the not-quite-so-wonderful "Help"?

One of my very favorite recent-ish musical films is "That Thing You Do," the story of a "one-hit wonder" band, set in the mid-60s. Tom Hanks produced the film, appears in a supporting role, and has a number of songwriting credits for the score. And it's the songwriting that is so impressive in this film; the cental characters get to go on one of those all-star bus tours with a number of other acts signed with the same record company, and they all perform ~ we hear original songs that sound just like real hits in a wide variety of pop/rock subgenres: there's a soulful girl-group, an aging solo girl singer, a lounge-singer Bobby Darin type, and then of course our heroes, who have accidentally stumbled upon a "Beatlesque" sound. There's even a subplot that involves some nice mellow West Coast jazz.

Get the long version, or "director's cut," or whatever they call it. I saw it in the theater, and again when it first came out on cable TV. A year or two later, flipping through channels, I caught it about a half-hour in and suddenly saw scenes I had never witnessed before. A new version, about 20-25 minutes longer, had been released on DVD and to the cable stations. Some of the added-back-in material is story/exposition, but a lot of it is simply more music. Well worth it to seek out the improved longer version if you're motivated to watch this for the first time.

And oh yeah, one more thing: this is NOT one of those musicals where people inexplicably burst into song in the midst of conversation (which is a common criticism of "musical-comedy" plays and films). The film is about performing musicians, and ALL the songs are shown to us in the context of performance or rehearsal ~ in other words, "realistic."