ALMOST FAMOUS - dir. cameron crowe
i spent two hours in new york with cameron crowe's up-and-coming new film, almost famous...and NEARLY DIED!
almost famous is hardly as bad as all that; in fact, it's entertaining and amusing -- if i had to pick one word to describe it, it'd be "affable." lester bangs (played to perfection here by philip seymour hoffman) warned that this film would try to become my friend, and that i need to be honest and merciful when reviewing it, and so i shall be.
when roger ebert begins his review of a film with the line, "oh, what a lovely film. i was almost hugging myself while I watched it," that's a red herring. all of the reviews i'd read before seeing the film were almost too positive. when i got home, i read j. hoberman's review in the village voice. i was first surprised by the fact that the very review i was to write was already on that page, but mostly i was amazed to find myself agreeing with hoberman, whose indier-than-thou schtick is very off-putting, but how can you hate a guy who liked x-men? despite this, i shall write a review anyway.
the movie, if you don't know, is cameron crowe's semi-autobiographical tale of a 15 year-old hoodwinking rolling stone into giving him an assignment to cover up-and-coming rock band, stillwater. stillwater is distrustful of the kid, one william miller (patrick fugit), but eventually realize that he could make them look good. the creative axis of stillwater is made up of guitarist russell hammond (billy crudup) and singer jeff bebe (jason lee, making the most of a shallow role). accompanying the band is a handful of group-...i mean, "band aids," led by penny lane (kate hudson) -- they differ from groupies in that they're with the band for the music and not to be near famous people, though we never quite see proof of this.
mike called this, "the first rockcrit movie ever." oh, that it were! if you're the sort of person who not only knows the name "lester bangs," but also have read his reviews, you're bound to be disappointed by this film. you will, however, be blown away by philip seymour hofmann as bangs, in his limited screen time: as with most of his films, hoffman is in a league all his own; he's the one person in the movie who makes you feel like he didn't need to do any research at all, that he came into the film knowing full well who bangs was and what he believed in. watching him, you'll wish that the film was a bangs bipoic, but that's not the kind of picture that makes money.
crowe calls this film his "love letter to rock & roll." the problem, then, is that i wouldn't have too hard of a time seeing young william as a cub reporter for sports illustrated, trying to get an interview with an athlete on the rise, so tangential music often is in this film. there's one scene on the tour bus where this isn't the case: everyone eventually starts to sing along with elton john's "tiny dancer." sure, in a way, it's a hokey scene where everyone is finally on the same page, but it's imbued with such sincerity and it's possibly the only instance in the film where music comes to fore. the use of music in the film, for the most part, is similar to the way scorsese or tarantino use it: as irony or as a means of furthering the plot or as a way to show you how obscure, how diverse, and most importantly, how much better than your own the director's taste is. what the movie really seems to be about is how cool it is to be young and hanging out with rock stars, which is more than slightly grating because it starts to come across, as mike says, as crowe's homage to himself.
besides that, the main flaw is the lack of character development. the characters, by and large, are a hazy, poorly fleshed-out group. crudup and hudson are defined more by their expressions and gestures than by the lines they're given; lee is your stereotypical lead singer; fugit bugs out his eyes a lot and gets indignant often; frances mcdormand, as fugit's mother, is ridiculously rigid. crowe seems to suffer some sort of perspective-bias: he lived all of this so the characters are vivid in his mind and so he doesn't bother filling them out for the rest of us who weren't there.
despite all of this, i did enjoy the film, just like the young protagonist who comes out liking the band, despite all of the shit they put him through. the dialogue was often sharp and the film was well-paced. if you enjoyed jerry maguire, i can't see you not also enjoying this film and, come oscar time, i'm sure it will get its share of nominations. most people aren't music obsessives, after all. however, crowe professes to be one; it's the reason he ended up at rolling stone in the first place. no one, though, really comes out and says why they love music (bangs excepted) until the last line of the film when crudup's character finally gives fugit an interview.
"music is everything," he says. i can't disagree with that assessment, but through this film, crowe does. the love of music is implicit rather than explicit. we're to assume that, because he owns records, fugit is the kind of dedicated kid who would drop out of school to fly across the country covering a subpar rock band. the next night, we watched tim burton's ed wood which, through the telling of wood's life story, i think is burton's ode to his craft. i don't believe that wood every reallys says why he loves making movies, but in every scene of that film, you at least feel that love. and that is why almost famous is just almost good. almost.
(c) 2000 - fred solinger -
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