Once: A Four-Sentence Movie Review

Going into Once, there were two reasons why I thought I might be disappointed: 1) It's received virtually universal praise from critics, which would surely unfairly raise my expectations, and 2) the word "musical" was being thrown around, and - though I probably like them more than I'm willing to admit - I'm not a big fan of those. Something I am willing to admit is that I'm a sucker for an unconventional romance, and a story where two people fall in love (or do they?) through musical expression definitely qualifies. This isn't a "musical," in the sense that the story stops for song-and-dance numbers or characters sing dialogue (which would be what I hate about some musicals), but there are scenes in which entire songs are performed, and that is the story for the two lead characters. The story ends in the only way it really should, and you are an extremely strong person if you don't run right to a music store or your computer to get the soundtrack after watching this movie.