Fans of Britain's music scene in the late 1970's will want to pop this amiable comedy in their diary. It's loosely based on the true story of Terri Hooley, Belfast's god-father of punk, who rose from struggling record store owner to promoter of a ground-breaking concert which cost him his livelihood. Failure was a recurring theme for this surprisingly successful man who dominated local punk, discovered Feargal Sharkey's Undertones and gave legendary DJ John Peel the best three minutes of his life. But music was only ever music for Hooley who could, or would, never grasp the commercial reality of the industry.

Played with a charming vitality by Richard Dormer (Game Of Thrones), he is the pivot on which the story revolves. How much you buy into it depends entirely on his capacity to get you around the film's wobbly tone and its distracting cast of underwritten characters. For Hooley – affable, funny, charming and surprisingly non-punk – is the only person given any depth despite considerable time spent with his wife (Jodie Whittaker - Venus), associates (Liam Cunningham - The Wind That Shakes The Barley and Dylan Moran- Black Books) plus band members (led by Andrew Simpson – Notes On A Scandal). Co-directors Lisa Barros D'Sa and Glenn Leyburn also spend an extraordinary amount of time involving actuality of 'the troubles' which dominated Northern Ireland's political landscape.

It adds colour and perspective, but as Good Vibrations oscillates between feel good charmer, quirky comedy, family then political drama, it never lands satisfactorily in any domain for long. The real story, how one man's passion came to dominate his life at considerable cost, gets lost among thematic divergences and narrative cul-de-sacs. Still, the music brings some energy to the film and Dormer is easy to watch. Good Vibrations may steer you toward the Beach Boys before punk (and in truth, Hooley is a minor footnote in that scene anyway), however fans should find this slight yet engaging film to their liking.

// COLIN FRASER

Previewed at Studio 12, Entertainment Quarter, Sydney, on 3 February 2014