You Gotta Keep Playin', No Matter with Who

Going all the way back to the Bosom Buddies days, I have been a big Tom Hanks guy (no pun intended, okay, maybe a little). Many kids today probably never heard of that show or even now that Hanks was arguably one of the funniest men of the eighties. This may be thanks to his back to back academy awards for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump along with the one that got away, Apollo 13. With that trio of films, Hank pretty much had carte blanche to do as he pleased in Hollywood and after a few serious films, Hands decided for a lighter fair that he decided to write and direct himself.

That Thing You Do! followed the rise of a sixties band, the One-ders, from talent shows in Erie, Pennsylvania to the Billboard charts thanks their the uber-catchy song that shares the name of the movie. Even though stars in the movie, he doesn’t show up until the middle of the movie as the bands’ big time manager who wisely changes the band’s name to the Wonders to avoid confusion and mispronunciation. Instead Hanks leaves the movie in the hands of a cast who were relative unknowns back in 1996.

Leading the way was the Tom Hanks look-alike Tom Everett Scott (Dead Man on Campus) as the last minute replacement for a talent show as the band’s original drummer, played by Earl Hickey’s old pal Ralph, broke his hand right before the show. Not that he endeared himself to his new band mates, primarily principle writer Johnathon Schaech (The Sweetest Thing), who song Scott speeds up as Schaech wrote That Thing You Do as a balled. But the rest of the band, Steve Zahn (Saving Silverman) the rambunctious guitarist, and Ethan Embry (Can’t Hardly Wait) filling out the quiet one quota in the band.

And Hanks isn’t the only one in the cast with a little golden man as the film was one of the first times anyone saw Charlize Theron (Sweet November) as she shows up as Scott’s disinterested girlfriend. Then there was Liv Tyler (Jersey Girl), who may be a little more well versed in seventies rock than sixties pop, as the unofficial fifth member of the band and Schaech’s main squeeze. Hanks wasn’t shy about also giving some work to his friends and family as both his wife and kid, Colin in his first on screen roll, make cameos as well as his former Bosom Buddy Peter Scolari who hosts the Ed Sullivan like show the Wonders performs on.

Just as important as the casting was the role of writing a song that actually could have been a hit back in the sixties. And they definitely were successful with that with That Thing You Do, a catchy ditty written by Adam Schlesinger, who later got a hit singing about Stacy’s Mom with his band Fountains of Wayne years later. The song was so good that not only did the song fictitiously land in the top ten on the Billboard charts in the sixties, it peaked at forty-one back in 1996 for real.

Over ten years after its initial release, the movie gets a special edition treatment with the Tom Hanks’ Extended Cut with over thirty minutes of footage of scenes that originally saw the cutting room floor for the original theater version. This does make the the Extended Cut a little long in the tooth in parts of the film (but you can always check out the Original Theatrical Release if the extended version is too long for you). There is also a second disk chalk full of extras that includes three featurettes, a reunion of the cast, HBO First Look, your garden variety of TV spots and trailers, and more.

That Thing You Do! Tom Hanks’ Extended Cut gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.