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Movie Review

Making the least of Paul Potts’ ‘One Chance’

James Corden and Alexandra Roach star in “One Chance,” about Paul Potts, who won the first series of “Britain’s Got Talent.” LIAM DANIEL/The Weinstein Company/The Weinstein Company

As it turns out, Paul Potts (James Corden) gets more than one chance in “One Chance,” the trite telling of how he triumphed on “Britain’s Got Talent” with a resounding rendition of the aria “Nessun dorma.” Otherwise, the film would be short indeed.

But David Frankel’s film reduces an extraordinary life to a predictable template of bullying, resolve, success, disappointment, and platitudes — a pattern repeated two or three times until the genuinely moving finale. It’s like a song heard many times before, and not one by Puccini.

Growing up in Port Talbot, Wales — a smoking slag heap that makes Gary, Ind., look like Beverly Hills — the opera-loving Potts has an even tougher time fitting in than did the aspiring ballet dancer in “Billy Elliott.” He has a powerful tenor voice, but low self-esteem, and becomes the target of bullies and a disappointment to his prole pa, Roland (Colm Meaney).

But it’s all done for laughs, and anyway his mother, Yvonne (Julie Waters), loves him. She never gives up on Paul, nor does Braddon (MacKenzie Crook), his best friend and co-worker at the cellphone shop. His girlfriend Julie-Ann (Alexandra Roach) does go off in a snit once in a while but after they get married she’s always there with her trademark confidence booster — “one step at a time!” Along with the refrain of being true to yourself, this helps Paul get past the rough patches.

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And, as previously noted, he gets his share of chances. He wins a local talent contest, uses the prize money to attend a music school in Venice (cue montages of the Grand Canal), and gets an audition with Pavarotti. But there are setbacks along the way (luckily, Britain has socialized medicine) and, just when things have hit bottom and he’s working on his computer to figure a way out of financial disaster, a pesky pop-up ad interrupts. It’s a picture of the diabolical Simon Cowell offering a chance to enter a new show called “Britain’s Got Talent” and win a hundred grand. On a whim, Paul applies.

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Maybe it did happen that way. Nonetheless, it’s the first time I’ve seen a pop-up ad used as a major plot device.

And so, on to the finale. Though Corden brings a goofy pathos to the role, it doesn’t measure up to Potts’s actual four-minute “Britain’s Got Talent” performance, now with more than 128 million views on YouTube. Potts’s face is twisted with despair, resignation at the prospect of one more humiliating defeat, and a lifetime of hardship. And then he sings. It takes your breath away.

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Peter Keough can be reached at petervkeough@gmail.com.