Frank steers away from almost-Almost Famous territory and into something familiar to anyone who’s seen The Devil and Daniel Johnston; director Abrahamson carries his deft balancing of tonal shifts from his 2012 film What Richard Did over to this effort.
Frank follows a post-internet age Billy Liar and asks, “What if he did follow his dream through, but his idol was a lunatic?” Jon (Domnhall Gleeson), a young middling English songwriter, gets invited to play keyboard for the aforementioned Frank (Michael Fassbender). Frank wears a giant fake head made of papier-mâché and refuses to take it off. Soon, Jon is invited to spend a year in Ireland with the band as they record their painstakingly overblown album, all the while secretly filming it and posting clips to YouTube.