sappiness

It would have been easy for this type of story to slip into sentiment and sappiness, but Ishiguro’s screenplay never tells us too much, and Hermanus keeps the tone low-key; nobody, including Mr. Williams, is a saint here.

Peter Jackson’s documentary, “Get Back,” also released at the end of 2021, changed the way many people thought about McCartney: always popular but wrongly blamed for the Beatles’ breakup, and often critically drubbed as a middle-of-the-roader given to sappiness or, worse, insincerity.

Stokes sweetly croons, “And I, I think I love you / and I think that I loved you the whole time,” stretching out vowels but not giving a hint of sappiness.

Pop music had so thoroughly prepared me to discover that my militant sappiness had been an infantile fantasy that I entered adulthood in a state of terror.

Along with Combs’ sensitive but resolute singing, they keep “Ideal Man” far from any sappiness, despite the depth of emotions.