John Carney is the writer-director who created the much-loved microbudget love story, Once, about a busker; it was a festival smash and was turned into an equally admired stage musical. Carney has tried to revive this busk aesthetic in a much more glamorous and bigger-budget followup, Begin Again. Boozy music executive Dan (Mark Ruffalo) is fired from the hip New York City record company he helped create, but finds redemption at a late-night music club, where heartbroken songwriter Greta (Keira Knightley) is singing an entrancing, melancholy number. Dan vows to make her the next Norah Jones. But without access to fancy studios and the like – and in a feisty let's-do-the-show-right-here spirit – Dan says they will record an entire demo album on the streets of New York. Strangely, this is to be no mere lo-fi guitar-plus-voice: a whole bunch of session musicians improbably gallop around these locations. You don't have to be a cynic or a recording expert to suggest this might sound the same in someone's apartment, with ambient digitally faked street noises. Incidentally, Dan's firing doesn't appear to cost him anything much, and his drinking is evidently no long-term problem, either. It's all a bit easy – though quite nicely performed – and Knightley is never entirely convincing as a music star; she is less interesting than Hailee Steinfeld, playing Dan's long-suffering teenage daughter. Their relationship has more spark.