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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Almost Famous

Regrettable Juvenilia

22:29 / 13.10.01

This film suspends my critical faculties.

Rock and roll!!!

06:36 / 14.10.01

It does fucking rule...

07:28 / 14.10.01

This movie is good because of:

Jason Lee
The Soundtrack
Nostalgia for an age that never existed
Not another goddamn thing

But, still, I liked it. It does "suspend the critical faculties".

12:45 / 14.10.01

I enjoyed this movie so much I actually saw it twice! In the theater!

I feel the key elements of this film for me are:

1. Lots of 70s rock n' roll
2. Awesome fantasy of being a teenage rock critic ON TOUR WITH A ROCK BAND ALL SUMMER LONG!!! fulfilled.
3.Jason Lee as Rock God
4. That scene where they all sing "Tiny Dancer" kinda gives me chills.
5. Film is set in year of my birth.

I really liked it. But it always feels like a guilty pleasure to me for some reason..

14:12 / 14.10.01

I think Almost Famous is meant to be set in a bizarre alternate world created and ruled over by 70sman..

My favourite bit was the guest appearance by Lester Bangs sticking the Stooges on daytime radio - what a guy!

I also like the way that rather than trying to distance itself from Spinal Tap, the film actively embraces comparisons..

I also like the way that most of the music on the soundtrack is COMPLETE SHIT!

It does though have the soppiest and most contrived ending in cinema history, but as the whole film is nostalgic and rosy-tinted as fuck, we can probably let that slide..

So, a nice fairy tale about the joys of rock n roll and a nice fantasy for anyone who's ever considered seeking work as a music journalist, but I wish they'd set it in a period where the music was slightly better, like say, two years later, in New York.

14:31 / 14.10.01

It's adolescent-male wish-fulfillment of the basest sort, really--a fanboy's fantasy splashed on screen: Wow, whouldn't it be cool if I met my favorite writer ever and he was this really cool guy and he really liked me and I got to meet all these bands and we'd be really good friends and all the girls would think I was really cool and...

The fact that it's based on the writer's own true life story makes the thinly-written female characters even more inexcusable: William's mother is the one obvious exception, although the impression she made was helped immeasurably by Frances McDormand's performance. But really, "Penny Lane" was just embarrassing.

That said, it did peg the fact that I can confirm from my personal experiences in bands--that most musicians are crass, dull, self-absorbed ("I am a golden god," indeed) and none too fucking bright, and that the scenesters are even worse.

Re: the shitness of the soundtrack: I think that was kind of the point--that the music, Stillwater's music in particular, that seemed so important and meant so much to all involved, was in fact mediocre at best.

Which is why it sort of surprises me to hear so much praise showered upon the film (and, in another thread, the music of the 1970s) here by our British friends--here I thought it was us Americans who didn't understand irony.

Regrettable Juvenilia

22:27 / 14.10.01

Hmm. I agree with some of what you're saying, Jack - such as the thinly-written female characters, which is kinda what I meant by it suspending my critical faculties - but I think the film walks the line between cynicism and idealism pretty well. I'd disagree with both the statement that all the music in the film is shit, and the idea that that's the point - or rather, I kind of agree but thing it works both ways. The fact that people invest so much in what one character in the movie actually calls "some stupid little piece of music" is one of the most beautiful and yet inexplicable things about loving music, isn't it?

I also think, for what it's worth, that Lester Bangs was wrong about one thing, which is that in hindsight, the excesses of that period did not kill rock'n'roll/popular music. The contrast between his scepticism, and nostalgia for a time when rock'n'roll was somehow better, is contrasted with William's youthful optimism - both are slightly off the mark, one too ready to embarce whatever comes along now, one too ready to dismiss it. The truth lies... somewhere in between.

p.s. Soppy as it is, I too found the 'Tiny Dancer' bit on the bus affecting...

11:39 / 15.10.01

I guess this is the thing that gets me about this movie. Contrived in ways, yes, badly written female characters... Well you must admit that both Frances McDormand's character and William's sister were intriguing. The film didn't spend a lot of time on them but I think there COULD HAVE (key here) been some character development.

Penny Lane... I hear you Jack, but as you've all ready said, it's an adolescent male fantasy and that's the point of view from which the story is told. We know William's character had a crush on her, he's a 15-year-old boy, how deep is she gonna be?

But I digress. The thing that really gets me about this film, more than anything, is that it is so clearly done with a sincere LOVE of rock n' roll. In that regard, it does a great job of expressing something that I think is kind of hard to portray on screen (that love).

And I have the soundtrack and it does NOT suck! 'Course I have a penchant for soundtracks, but the Zep song on there is good, "Every Picture Tells A Story" by Faces is an excellent tune, and best of all you get David Bowie's cover of "Waiting for the Man"! I'll admit I could do without a few of the tunes on there, however.

18:13 / 18.04.04

Almost Famous is a film made with such love, that you get caught up in it, and go along with everything, despite the implausibility. I think the longer DVD version makes things a little more believable, by slowing down the opening parts of the film, and giving William more credibility as a potential journalist.

I think Penny Lane is a thinly written character because she's meant to be more an idea than a person. The whole persona is a costume fantasy, desgined so that she can be with rockstars, and so that rockstars would want to be with her. When on tour, the musicians become rockstars, and the groupies are a part of that. There's not supposed to be any depth among those people, they're all living out a kind of fantasy.

And, I think the music is great, and the cues work really well with th scenes, particularly at the end with Led Zep's The Rain Song and Tangerine. Stillwater is intentionally designed to be just catchy 70's style rock, and it works.

Jack The Bodiless

11:49 / 20.04.04

What he just said.

12:46 / 20.04.04

Those '70s did exist. You just had to go out and find them. Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused was practically a documentary. I went to a Texas high school from 1977 to 1981 that was 90% like the one in the movie and I can attest that the non-touring-with-Stillwater parts of Almost Famous were pretty true to life. Not Oscar material by any stretch, but worth the time.

The 1970s were mixed for adults--crappy economy but no AIDS or herpes--but fantastic for teenagers--cool toys, some sex, casual underage drinking and no War On Drugs. I wouldn't go back, but I'm glad those two movies reminded me how much fun those times could be.

A lot of the music was crap, but it fit the times perfectly and, anyway, a lot of the music is always crap.

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:12 / 19.05.04

Seeing this a second time, I reckon the only really objectionable thing in this film is the journo kid/Penny Lane/rock star triangle, specifically the bit where Fugit saves her from the drug overdose. It's just too obnoxious in that "oh, she is beautiful and cool but so fragile really, why does she not realise that instead of the cool grown man who will mistreat her she should be with the geeky sensitive boychild?" - if I want that shit I'll read the Conversation. That one scene where she's having her stomache pumped and he watches and smiles because she'll live - the way it's shot is just really, really horrible and misogynistic and hard to forgive.

However, the rest of the movie stands up better than I expected - on a second viewing, the awful personality flaws of the scenesters and the band is much more obvious from the start. Even when they're having the "good times" that the kid is amazed by, the accuracy of the depiction made me cringe because I have known people quite a lot like that (I'm thinking in particular of the scene in which Penny Lane comes into the room with the tape deck and does her little Air Hostess party piec). And Billy Crudup is very good at playing a slightly Devilish figure, in the sense that he delivers the self-justification for sleeping around in a suitably insidious manner "you meet some amazing people on the road - like you". He makes it tempting and icky at the same time.