In the ensuing years from losing her vocalist brother in a car crash, a young guitar prodigy comes into play – which is left to speculation that he could be a reincarnation of her late brother.
“A Mighty Oak” opens with a band doing a soundcheck in a trendy but tiny concert venue. Gina Jackson (Janel Parrish) is a manager for the fictitious yet poorly-named band, Army of Love. The filmmakers try to insert a feeling of immediacy akin to the opening of “A Star is Born,” by showing Gina flummoxed looking backstage for her tardy lead singer. The late lead singer is Vaughn (Levi Dylan, grandson of Bob Dylan) and he’s holed is in his dressing room, working on a new tune. Gina is adamant for him to get on stage but first, because he’s self-absorbed, she needs to hear his new ballad. I love music, I have a really eclectic range of taste, but the song and the accompanying original music is not good. This song in particular sounds like a cringe-inducing Creed-like vocal or some similar cheesy ’90s rock band. After he’s done playing his song, the band gets on stage and continues to play to the audience. Just as things are looking up for Vaughn and his Army of Love, the band gets into a head-on collision on their way back from the venue. Car crashes are intense, scary, and director Brian McNamara completely bungles the delivery. The car crash scene is pure slapstick, Vaughn is “launched” through the windshield but the sloppy editing shows the actor clearly just leaning forward towards the glass. If that wasn’t bad enough, the camera shows shattered glass with all the band’s instruments crashing, one by one, in a heavy-handed montage striving for symbolism.
Cut to months or years later (the filmmakers never make it clear) and Gina is behind on her bills and looking pretty amazing for someone who’s supposedly grieving and not taking care of herself. Enter Oak Scoggins (Tommy Ragen), a 10-year-old boy who lives above the coffee shop, with his pill-addicted mother, where the surviving members of Army of Love frequent. The coffee shop’s owner oddly just gives Oak the deceased Vaughn’s guitar with the irrelevant advice of, “if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it.” Although broke, Gina has money to gamble and seems like a pretty bad Blackjack player. After blowing $3,000 on the tables, she is determined to find a new act or reunite the old band.
Eventually, Gina meets this potential child prodigy and becomes convinced that he’s Vaughn reincarnated, yes that’s the premise of the film. All it takes for her to be convinced is that he learned Vaughn’s simple three-chord guitar melody and points with the rock-n-roll devil-horns gesture that surely ONLY Vaughn would do. Even more insane is Oak, a little boy, ends up leading the adult band and he’s immediately accepted by their audience. The cast is chock full of Disney Channel former stars, who are all way too cute and cheery to be actual artists and they’re perfectly groomed every moment of the day. “A Mighty Oak” is so bad it’s almost good but the underlying cheese, the perplexing plot, and bizarre character motivations, make it a dud.
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