Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight

Why do movies about the music biz so rarely work? Yes, Spinal Tap is a bang-on-the-money classic, but that’s a mockumentary, a piss-take. Elsewhere, whenever things are played straight, chortles or head scratches are usually generated. Just try boring twaddle like that Mariah Carey stinkfest, Glitter, or the sanitised pap of Almost Famous in which we’re supposed to be enthralled by a baby-faced journo and a vapid groupie as they follow a blandly named, dead uninteresting band on tour. I dunno, perhaps there’s something too bloated and inherently ridiculous about mega-successful artists to convincingly capture it. Look at the 2016 HBO series Vinyl, a non-PC, intermittently fascinating car crash of a show that focused on New York’s scene during the early 70s. It was co-created by Mick Jagger, the opening two-hour episode was directed by Scorsese, and it starred the decent Bobby Cannavale.

A bit of pedigree, yes?

However, the plug was pulled after one series, the producers no doubt unimpressed with the obnoxious lead character, the seesawing tone, its stop-start nature, some unnecessary gangsters, a ridiculous touch of the supernatural, its overwhelming vulgarity, and impersonations of varying quality of everyone from Karen Carpenter to Elvis. Oh boy, it was a hot mess.

In other words, it complemented a long line of cinematic failures trying to capture the hedonistic, ego-driven madness of the music biz.

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains (1982)
“If you’re not yourself, you’re nobody.”

Can’t sing, got no stage presence, have only written one song and lack a drummer? You’d think such drawbacks for a fledgling band might prove problematic, but not the female trio, The Stains. Then again, plausibility is hardly the strong point of this apparently pro-female tale of life on the road. Things just happen. For example, they manage to get taken on a U.S. tour, even though they’re about fifteen and the promoter hasn’t heard them play. Then they change their Suzi Quatro leather-clad look to see-through blouses and no skirts while giving themselves skunk-like hairdos. TV coverage follows, in which they trot out the standard punk ethos (“Don’t get screwed, don’t be had”), thus enabling them to attract hordes of clone-like female followers. And before you know it, they’re headlining the tour.

Flipping heck, what a load of baloney.

Part of the problem I had with The Fabulous Stains is that the titular group (consisting of Diane Lane, Laura Dern and Marin Kanter) barely feature in the first half of the movie. We get to hear them sing part of a song in which the obviously talentless lead singer drones “I’m a waste of time, don’t call me” before berating an understandably unimpressed audience as “fuckers” and “suckers”.

The Fabulous Stains focuses more on a young Ray Winstone on the same tour in his Scum follow-up. He’s the obnoxious lead vocalist of The Looters, a malcontent employing his best Johnny Rotten sneer (which is hardly a surprise given that his band contains two real-life Pistols). His music is also far more convincing and authentic than The Stains’. “Girls can’t be rock ‘n’ rollers,” he says. “It’s a fact of life.”

However, ten minutes later he’s telling The Stains’ lead singer: “You are different. You are gonna be really good.” Then they’re getting it on in the shower, even though he’s previously been nothing but dismissive and she’s publicly (and repeatedly) stated her pride in not putting out. This flip-flopping nonsense is backed up by a woman TV reporter consistently hailing the band as a compelling voice for teen girls. “In their rebellion,” she gushes, “they have clearly decided that female existence should not be a rush to the grave – or worse, to the supermarket.”

In short, The Fabulous Stains is a mess, especially as it belatedly arrived after punk had given way to new wave and the New Romantics. It wants to be a low-key slice of realism, but is too fantastical to be believable. It pushes individuality, non-conformity and the importance of not putting up with shit in the flimsiest way possible. The Stains never say or do anything interesting, let alone rebellious. The Runaways, they ain’t.

Rock Star (2001)
“You need to get a grip on reality.”

For movies to work, they weirdly have to be more believable than reality. Flesh and blood characters have to interact amid credible events that hopefully generate some insight and meaning whereas in real life we all know that people are capable of floundering in the most self-defeating, random, inexplicable shit. Or as screenwriter Harry Dawes (Bogart) clarifies in The Barefoot Contessa: “A script has to make sense, and life doesn’t.”

Rock Star, however, is not realistic. Its premise feels like an insult to your intelligence. And yet it’s built on truth.

Rob Halford used to be in Judas Priest, but the legendary wailer quit the headbanging group in the early nineties after a 20-year stint that saw a handful of hit singles and tens of millions of albums sold. He was replaced by a charmingly named bloke called Ripper from one of their many cover bands. A nutty turn of events in anybody’s book. But, of course, that’s reality for you. We go along with it because, well, we have to. Try to capture such outlandish nonsense in a movie, though, and it rarely sits right.

Things aren’t helped by the casting of Mark Wahlberg as our titular hero. Now as an actor he just about gets a pass from yours truly because he was good in Boogie Nights, but everything else… nah. So I don’t buy him as a rock star which again doesn’t make sense because he first gained prominence by delightfully massaging our eardrums with a string of classics from Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. Well, he chirruped some fluff that the tweens bought for five minutes before moving onto the next luminary.

Here he’s Chris, the lead singer of Blood Pollution, a tribute band that worships the mighty metal gods, Steel Dragon. He knows everything about them, plays their songs to reasonably sized crowds, dresses like their lead singer down to the smallest detail, and sends flowers when their pet dog dies. His devotion is so total that he pierces a nipple not because he wants to but because his idols have just done it.

Unfortunately, it’s all a facade because there’s sure as hell little else rock ‘n’ roll about him. OK, he’s snagged a hot girlfriend, but otherwise he lives at home with his parents. He also works in an office in a shirt and tie (and mascara) fixing the hardware. Plus, he’s an uptight, nitpicky, overly serious dick pushing thirty. We’re invited to boo his straitlaced, disapproving cop brother (a man who likes Air Supply and hates Steel Dragon), but it’s hard to do anything but share his contempt for Chris’ way of life. Or as he tells his younger sibling at the breakfast table: “You know what the sickest thing is about you, little man? The sickest thing about you is you don’t even have any fantasies of your own. You fantasise about being somebody else, wearing somebody else’s clothes, singing somebody else’s songs. It’s pathetic.”

Chris, however, won’t let the dream die, his intensity resulting in so many bust-ups with Blood Pollution’s members that he’s eventually booted out. I think we’re supposed to be sad, but luckily girlfriend Emily (Jennifer Anniston in yet another desperate attempt to prove she’s more than a TV actress) is on hand to give a pep talk. “The first time I ever saw you,” she tells him, “the first time I laid eyes on you, I said to myself ‘Oh, my God, that guy’s got it’. I mean, my heart stopped. I said, that guy is going all the way.”

Yes, well, as we’ve already understood throughout Rock Star’s first half-hour, she might love him but it’s clear Chris is a somewhat unlikeable nobody aping a somebody. If this movie had any plausibility, he’d carry on fixing photocopiers, one day stop wearing the mascara, and come to understand that youthful dreams overwhelmingly end in jack shit. He might even learn to laugh at himself.

But, no, this is a movie so three and a half seconds after he’s been dumped by his unappreciative band mates he gets a phone call from Steel Dragon’s rhythm guitarist asking him to audition.

Huh? How’d that happen? How is a band with international prominence even aware of Chris’ pitiable existence?

Well, their lead singer has also been kicked out and our despondent wannabe is in the frame to replace him because two Blood Pollution groupies have shown a videotape of one of Chris’ performances to Steel Dragon. Do cover bands attract groupies then? And how does a pair of fuck holes gain such influential access to the inner circle of a major band?

Never mind, for Chris aces his one-minute audition and is suddenly flying coast to coast, hopping in and out of limos, performing before tens of thousands and schmoozing with music industry types, most of whom are wearing badly fitting wigs. He even gets to meet Steel Dragon’s beloved lead singer Bobby Beers (a rank Jason Flemyng) who snarls at him: “You think you can dress up like me and be a rock star? You have no idea what it takes!”

And so what does it take, Mr. Beers? Apparently no drugs and going to bed before 11.30 if you’ve got a gig the next day. Frankly, I was expecting a bit more, mate.

Then again, Rock Star has such a broad approach that it’s no surprise most of the telling details are missing. Not that it doesn’t feature well-shot concert sequences while attempting to capture the adolescence of a typical metal band e.g. when Chris is asked by a journo how he keeps his voice in such great shape, a bandmate answers for him: “He eats a lot of pussy.”

Elsewhere, it consistently hits the wrong note, such as Chris telling a massed audience: “You know I’m just a regular guy who grew up with the posters of these guys on my walls and now I’m one of them. I’m standing here, living proof that if you work hard enough and you want it bad enough, dreams do come true. So follow your dreams, man, follow your dreams.”

Yeah, right. An outrageous, ten-mile wide slick of luck had nothing to do with it.

Set in the mid-80s, Rock Star is a fantasy for wannabes. The writing isn’t good enough to capture the pathos of not only living in someone else’s shadow, but embracing it. Neither do we get a compelling sense of what it’s like to be in a humongous band, although I did enjoy the members of Steel Dragon encamped in a mansion that appears to be part recording studio, part living museum. Disappointingly, Rock Star only flirts with excess and the sleazy stuff. No Mars Bars and mudsharks here! The best we get is a carnivorous tranny. In fact, it’s familiar rubbish built on an enjoyable pile of clichés, the sort of movie in which TVs get thrown out windows as everyone plays dress up. It tries to tell us that ambition, ego clashes, compromise and all the rest are the same no matter what level you’re operating on, but doesn’t know whether it wants to be a satire, parody, exposé or straight drama. Instead it pisses around with all four approaches, its wonkiness cemented by a plethora of pedestrian performances.

With its generic but inaccurate title (given Steel Dragon are a metal band), the soundtrack doesn’t make sense either, throwing in pop like Culture Club and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Overall, I would have preferred the story to have stayed focused on Chris wasting his life in a cover band as he brawls with similarly sad aspirants in a car park. Cinemagoers stayed away from Rock Star in droves and it didn’t even recoup half its budget, but it’s worth your time if you fancy some smirks and groans.

Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982)
“Hey, are you feeling OK?”

Johnny Rotten didn’t like the Floyd and I can see why he sneered at their calamitous photo shoot for the cover of 1977’s Animals, which saw a giant inflated pig moored over Battersea Power Station inadvertently wander off. That’s not to say I’m averse to stuff like Shine on You Crazy Diamond, Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun and Comfortably Numb, but people like Rotten clearly helped puncture the bombast and excess surrounding such well-established acts with their shorter, nastier, more down to earth take on things.

Rotten was probably unimpressed by Floyd’s move into cinema, too, given it was a gas-ridden, self-indulgent mess masquerading as a movie. Directed by Alan Parker, it mixes live-action and Gerald Scarfe’s distinctive animation. Its strangely watchable opening half-hour spews out a jumble of images, giving us everything from Tommies coming under enemy fire and a zombie-like bloke in a hotel room to police brutality and a denunciation of state education all set to Roger Waters’ tortured, near-continual outpourings. It leaps around in time, predominantly centring on visions of distress. Yes, all very good, but how are these things connected and what the hell do they mean?

Well, I think it’s got something to do with a little boy losing his daddy during WW2, going to an oppressive school and then becoming a burnt-out rock star. Whatever the case, it’s definitely an exercise in angst that I’m supposed to get wrapped up in. There’s one small problem, though. I’m a straightforward bloke and respond best to a narrative that goes from A to B. Or A to Z. Not A, J, C, X, A, M, D and then a random Chinese character and a burst of hieroglyphics. The Wall’s minimal dialogue doesn’t help explain anything and so the whole shebang plays like an extended music video. Like 2001, it’s an experience, one that would no doubt be enhanced by chemical ingestion.

If The Wall attempts to illuminate the trials and tribulations of the music biz, it only offers the most superficial of peeks. Our catatonic ‘hero’ is a guy named Pink (Bob Geldof), who apparently is a rock singer. Well, we see him dazedly play a piano at one point. Elsewhere, groupies are happy to blow security guards to obtain backstage passes while Bob Hoskins eats watermelon at a party. And yes, a TV gets thrown out of a window.

Now I’m sure this ragtag collection of metaphors and whatnot means a great deal to its scribe, Roger Waters, but the casual viewer (whether a Floyd fan or not) is likely to have a hard time sticking with it. It’s fine for a while – interesting even – and I certainly enjoyed the education segment in which barking, cane-wielding teachers teach cowed kids by rote while stamping on the slightest sign of creativity. Youngsters are clearly viewed as a mass rather than individuals, leading to the memorable sight of these juvenile automatons obliviously tramping into a massive meat grinder.

Yet the good-looking The Wall never coalesces and there’s only so much you can do with all the arbitrary stuff that includes a mother fixation, rude cartoons, rioting, fascism, eyebrow removal and a CND rally. Why is TV-addicted Pink burnt out and threatening suicide? Has he been watching too much Coronation Street? And why are people with no faces in a packed train zooming by? After an hour or so, there’s nothing driving the picture but fumes. It veers far too close to avant-garde for my liking, but hey, if you like decent tunes set to occasionally arresting imagery, then dive in (preferably as high as a kite).

Now I wonder what Roger Waters thinks of Sid and Nancy.

Sid and Nancy (1986)
“Boring, Sidney. Boring, boring, boring.”

Lead characters don’t have to be likeable for a movie to work. I’ve got no problem at all with assholes, serial killers and Coldplay fans taking centre stage, but it’s a mistake to make such unfortunates relentlessly obnoxious. Sadly, that’s what we get with Alex Cox’s flop bio-pic. Sid and Nancy, as played by Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb, managed to turn me into my parents, nonplussed by the disrespectful, self-defeating behaviour of funnily dressed young folk. Hell, after enduring its near-two hours I even resolved to go out and join the Conservative Party.

It’s hard to decide who is the more abhorrent out of the spiky-haired, padlock-adorned Sid Vicious and his grating, self-pitying Yank girlfriend. Sid is the sort of bloke that walks into a house and spray paints the place. He headbutts brick walls and vandalises whatever is to hand (or boot). He pukes on people. In short, he’s thick. The man has no idea how to behave in public, adopting the same self-destructive, anti-social approach wherever he blunders. Still, given he had no discernible talents, he somehow did well to make a name for himself in his two crass decades.

Nancy is a skanky loser, a heroin-addicted groupie who initially rips Sid off. With a voice that belongs on The Simpsons, she’s in a constant strop, flouncing around like a backward fourteen-year-old. An emotional wreck, she has no talent except drug consumption. Her existence on this planet serves no purpose. Or as she tells Sid after the Sex Pistols’ split in a rare burst of self-awareness: “At least you used to be something. I’ve never been anything.” And just like Eve tempts Adam into taking a bite of the apple, she introduces her violent boyfriend to the joys of skag.

Are we supposed to find this obscenity-spouting pair endearing? Should we care about their abusive, self-inflicted struggles? Because I tell you what, there’s barely a second’s respite from their repulsiveness.

However, Sid and Nancy does succeed at giving an insight into London’s punk scene.

The Pistols’ chaotic gigs are a maelstrom of violence, spitting and abuse, although no one seems bothered at the lack of decorum. All part of the atmosphere, I guess. The inept, bass-playing Sid is likely to turn up on stage bloodied or confused by technology before picking a fight with someone in the moshing audience. Cripes, to keep up this level of aggression must be exhausting

As for the other main players, Johnny Rotten (Andrew Schofield) is short-changed, coming across as a farting, burping Scouse bore whereas the flick doesn’t get a handle on Malcolm McLaren (David Hayman). He’s merely sober, non-violent and sarcastic, although at least he contributes a decent line by underlining Sid’s role in The Pistols: “Sidney’s more than a mere bass player. He’s a fabulous disaster. He’s a symbol, a metaphor.”

Ultimately, Sid and Nancy is not particularly interested in the music, especially as it only offers poor recreations of their iconic songs. It’s more of a tragic love story, one that aspires to greatness. Hence, when separated by the demands of touring, Sid carves Nancy’s name into his chest with a razorblade, a grand gesture somewhat undermined by all traces of the mutilation having disappeared in the next scene. “If I asked you to kill me,” Nancy asks, “would you?” Sid thinks about it. “What would I do?” he replies in a hoarse voice. “I couldn’t live without you.” Hmm, this sort of Wuthering Heights-style passion is always hard to swallow, especially when unfolding in grimy, late 70s Britain.

Mainly, though, Sid and Nancy is a wallow in heroin addiction. Now this sort of thing can be entertaining (see Trainspotting), but this one trudges down the realistic route for far too long. It tries to shake things up with the odd fantasy sequence, such as the tortured lovers kissing in a New York alleyway while garbage rains down or through its ridiculous taxicab ending, but such episodes are too sporadic to be anything other than half-assed. At least Oldman puts in a good shift.

What’s Love Got to Do with It? (1993)
“If you don’t make it, I’ll kill you.”

One of the major problems with biopics is you often know the story beforehand, especially if the subject is mega-famous like Tina Turner. And so you watch patiently ticking off the facts – the teenage Anna Mae Bullock being discoveredWhat’s Love by Ike, changing her name, the big hit singles, the beatings, the wilderness years, and the triumphant comeback.

Not a lot of suspense, you know?

Neither are things helped by the illusion-denting decision to put Tina Turner’s distinctive voice in Angela Bassett’s mouth. Every time Bassett opens her pipes we hear Tina. This hammers home her miming which makes for a schizophrenic impersonation. It’s a shame as Bassett is otherwise excellent, neatly capturing Tina’s mannerisms and dance moves. Not sure what all those off-putting muscles are about, though.

Her performance is matched by Larry Fishburne as the selfish, womanising Ike. A talented artist in his own right, he slowly loses his coke-addicted fight with his inner demons to become, well, a bit of a shit. Initially a gentleman, he’s encouraging and supportive of his nightclub discovery, but perhaps this is because he senses the best meal ticket of his life. There’s a nice scene early on where he gets her to open her mouth, she thinks he’s going to kiss her, and he instead orders her to the dentist to have her cavities taken care of. You do get a feel for his narcissism, though, as when he’s busy seducing Tina by saying of his recently discarded common-law wife: “She did the worst thing you can do to anybody like me. She stopped believing in me.”

What’s Love, which surprisingly ignores any incidents of late fifties/early 60s Southern racism, prefers to derive its grittiness from the domestic abuse Ike inflicts (with increasing severity) on the bewildered, cowed Tina. It’s fairly graphic and includes a recording booth rape, but doesn’t really give any insight into why Tina endured the kickings for well over a decade. Sure, they were married parents and professionally entwined, but at times she merely mouths battered wife clichés. “He just got a lot of worries right now,” she tells a friend after the latest assault. “I know he’s sorry. Can’t nobody understand that he got a lot of pressure right now? Money. Music ain’t right. This, that and the other thing and what did I do? I insult him when I know he try.” Tina goes on to embrace Buddhist chanting, a habit that ridiculously cures her woes and provides the launch pad for her reinvention.

What’s Love offers a hundred percent sympathetic portrayal of Tina, a whitewash that tends to make the charismatic, driven, and deeply unpleasant Ike the more interesting character. Overall, it’s a decent, steady, but unspectacular effort that paints a convincing portrait of the music biz.

The Rose (1979)
“I’ve got a big mouth.”

Well, we’ve had a bio-pic so why not a pseudo bio-pic? Bette Midler plays Janis Joplin in all but name, an Oscar-nominated turn caught in microcosm when she distraughtly grabs a ringing phone and bellows into the receiver fuck off! She’s a ladette, a foul-mouthed tomboy and a self-destructive diva, meaning we are skidding along our faces in Tantrum Central.

Flippin’ heck, this one ain’t much fun. For a start it lacks a story. Mostly it’s just Midler flouncing around, screaming and sobbing, drinking and singing, and then doing a bit more flouncing. There were points where I thought her head was going to explode Scanners-style.

She’s Mary Rose Foster, a mega-successful singer with a disastrous behind-the-scenes life. She can’t get on with her pushy manager, men continually disappoint, muff-diving doesn’t appear to be the answer, and she’s long fled her family. You get the gist after fifteen minutes but two hours later the bloody thing’s still going. Well, all right, there’s a smidgen of a story in that she wants to triumphantly return to her Floridian hometown, a place where she once fucked the entire football team as if auditioning for a sequel to Debbie Does Dallas. Is she going to indulge the same naughty trick again? Or will she have to wait her turn behind The Rose’s alleged editors?

I can’t say I enjoyed the 1969-set The Rose, but it’s one of those flicks I’m sorta glad I watched. It gives a little insight into massive accomplishment, the pressures of fame and touring, and the spiteful idiocy of fans and peers. However, it’s undermined by clichés, excessive length and the OTT Midler belting out a bunch of average songs. I just couldn’t see why a middling artist has such a rabid fan base. At least the concert scenes are well directed, even if they, too, overstay their welcome. Alan Bates, who looks incongruous throughout, and Frederic Forrest provide harried support up until the gloriously daft climax.

Der Fan (1982)
“I know I can make you happy.”

Some movies, such as the German-made The Fan, are near-impossible to write about without giving away major plot developments. Still, I’m including it because it provides a different take on the music biz to the usual rise and fall stuff. This one’s about obsession. And not the healthy kind, such as my understated, quite tasteful passion for blonde cheerleaders.

Simone (Désirée Nosbusch) is a teenage girl who likes the new wave singer R (Bodo Staiger). And by ‘like’ I mean she listens to no other music, wears a T-shirt with his face emblazoned on it, she can’t concentrate at school, and waits outside the sorting office to see if he’s replied to any of her numerous letters. When no response comes she is convinced a ‘jealous secretary’ has thrown her correspondence away before getting into a fight with the poor postman.

We’re never given any reason or possible cause for Simone’s fixation, but there’s little doubt it’s growing in leaps and bounds. When she listens to his latest album she thinks: “It’s like he wrote every song for me, like he knew me inside out. I understand him and he understands me.”

As for R, he’s an emotionless, non-blinking, black-clad singer who looks like a cross between Gary Numan and Chairman Mao. His music sounds like Kraftwerk while his lyrics tend toward the gloomy e.g. ‘Life is just a moment and then it’s all over.’ Being a pop star doesn’t look too tricky, though. He just signs a few autographs, slaps on a bald cap to perform in front of some similarly hairless mannequins, hobnobs with fawning TV interviewers, and gets lackeys to run around for him. He clearly believes in the adage less is more, his performance style minimal, if not half-assed.

Anyhow, a desperate Simone runs away to Munich to loiter outside a TV studio in a bid to meet her idol/soul mate. R finally turns up, his car surrounded by squealing females, but somehow he still notices her. Shocked, she’s unable to speak and even turns into a Silly Girly by fainting. Luckily, R is a kind man and he’s at her side when she regains consciousness…

I suppose a crappy newspaper like The Guardian would condemn the ‘imbalance of power’ between such a pop star and a star-struck teen, but R is a long way from a predator. A bit smug and distant, yes, although I struggle to see what, if anything, he does that could be qualified as morally wrong. I mean, what’s a red-blooded guy supposed to do when a beautiful seventeen-year-old throws herself at you? Still, the slow-burn Fan makes it clear that obsession is a lonely, isolating place. Maybe I’d better rethink my passion for those blonde cheerleaders.

Nah.

24 Hour Party People (2002)
“Being at the Hacienda was like being at the French Revolution.”

I guess a movie’s appeal is enhanced if you already like the music of the artists within. Hence, I can sit through a flick about The Doors or Pink Floyd, but I’m pretty sure I’d struggle taking an interest in a Billy Joel biopic. Then again, I might perversely respond to such an unfortunate offering, especially if it portrayed him as a bland, narcissistic Satanist who cast a spell on Christie Brinkley. 24 Hour Party People focuses on the increasingly chaotic Madchester scene from the mid seventies to the early nineties, a period that coughed up such luminous acts as Joy Division, New Order, The Stone Roses and The Happy Mondays.

The jazz-hating Tony Wilson (Steve Coogan) presents a regional TV music show. After being enchanted by an early Pistols performance, he decides to establish a record label for the burgeoning punk and new wave scene and later open a nightclub. Despite being a Cambridge graduate, having a successful career and being able to quote all manner of leading lights, he looks ill at ease whether at a concert, meeting musicians or enjoying the attention of a hooker (“Do you mind if I touch your tits while you’re doing that, please?”) In essence, he’s a well-meaning doofus.

Party People doesn’t have a plot, preferring to drift from one amusing vignette to the next as the years tick by. It captures a fertile period in British music that was capitalised upon by Wilson’s relaxed approach, a handshake kind of guy who eschewed contracts. His close working relationship with the bands, such as giving them lifts back from gigs, shows he wasn’t your typical money-obsessed, Svengali-like suit. In fact, he was a clueless businessman. Archival clips of the bands in nascent action are mixed with some decent impersonations, especially Sean Harris as Joy Division’s doomed lead singer. The writing is good with plenty of funny, enjoyable dialogue. Veracity is also helped by the continual use of handheld cameras. Less impressive are the dashes of surrealism and the decision to have Wilson regularly break the fourth wall.

The messy Party People is as much about the Alan Partridge-like Wilson as the trials and tribulations of Manchester’s somewhat loutish music industry. Alternatively pretentious and self-deprecating, perceptive and retarded, passionate and incongruous, it’s the sort of role that is Coogan’s food and drink. Sure, he’s stuck in a flick that’s too long, languid and stylistically uneven, but he’s mostly engaging and gets good support from a host of British character actors.

Breaking Glass (1980)
“It’s not exactly Mantovani, is it?”

Ah, goodie, an exception. Like most flicks here, it’s a rise-and-fall tale, but at least it’s the right length and knowingly put together.

Struggling post-punk singer Kate (Hazel O’Connor) is a fierce individualist. Sporting a hairdo best described as a frizzy, bleached blonde helmet, she’s a ballsy, lively performer. Problem is, she’s not exactly going anywhere. Hardly a surprise, given she’s keen to resist becoming ‘part of the machinery’ i.e. being in a record company’s clutches. She meets Danny (Phil Daniels), a small-time hustler that wants to move into management, but who mainly helps fix the pop charts. Together they put a band together called Breaking Glass, a move that leads to the usual clueless suits, mega-flounces, the odd heroin-addicted sax player, and accusations of selling out. And, of course, Kate is nowhere near as tough as she thinks she is.

Glass, however, has a number of things in its favour. Its opening half-hour smoothly sucks you in with its ducking and diving, funny auditions, nascent dreams and sense of struggle. Compared to David Essex’s ridiculously easy rise to prominence in 1974’s Stardust, the band’s success feels hard-earned and believable. The spiky, original songs (some of which later cracked the UK top ten) boost credibility. The casting is on the money and Brits, in particular, will enjoy spotting actors such as Withnail’s Uncle Monty and the future landlord of the Nag’s Head. Glass is also set in a grimy, cold London against a backdrop of spiralling unemployment, latent violence, winos on the garbage-strewn streets, police harassment, power cuts and race hate.

It’s gnarly, all right.

Writer/director Brian Gibson, who went onto dogs like Poltergeist II and the Demi Moore debacle The Juror, might wallow in downbeat clichés, but the story moves well and he manages to come up with a handful of striking images. It’s a helluva lot better than his treacly final movie eighteen years later, Still Crazy.

The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989)
“We survived for fifteen years before you strutted on the scene.”

Inevitability can work fine in a movie. Predictability…? Not so much. And you won’t find a straighter, flatter length of track than the one The Fabulous Baker Boys travels along. Plus, as already mentioned, it helps to like the music concerned. Baker Boys is jazz-inflected, a genre summed up by Party People’s Tony Wilson: “Jazz is the last refuge of the untalented. Jazz musicians enjoy themselves far more than anyone listening.”

Never a truer word spoken.

Hence, I find the piano-based noodling and show tunes that litter this comedy-drama to be intensely dull and borderline lifeless. Listening to Michelle Pfeiffer’s barely in tune version of Can’t Take My Eyes off You, one of the movie’s livelier songs, is painful. Still, Baker Boys’ overwhelming problem is that it lacks surprises.

Jack and Frank Baker (Jeff and Beau Bridges) are a struggling lounge act. For fifteen years they’ve been making ends meet, but now they’re adorned in Hawaiian shirts playing to three-quarter-empty venues as the waiters watch basketball on the TV. Frank is the married, more personable of the two brothers and looks after the business side of things. He’s a worrywart and has taken to spraying his bald patch with black paint, but he’s still a recognisable inhabitant of Earth. Jack, however, is pretty much a lost cause. He’s on his last legs professionally, emotionally and spiritually, a state of affairs that results in one expression: contemptuous boredom. His only solace is smoking, a habit he indulges so relentlessly that he’s like a late twentieth-century poster boy for lung cancer.

So the Seattle-based Baker Boys are going nowhere. Cue idea to add a female singer. Cue auditions à la Breaking Glass in which a bunch of tuneless wannabes supposedly amuse us. And, of course, Susie Diamond (Pfeiffer) turns up late, dishevelled and chewing gum. Do you think she gets the gig? And do you think she takes no shit? And do you think she causes sexual tension? And do you think she has a stormy relationship with that world-weary ol’ fuck-hound, Jack? And do you think she jolts him back to life? At least some story threads aren’t predictable in that Jack’s interactions with his elderly Labrador and an upstairs brat have the decency to go absolutely nowhere.

Nominated for four Oscars, Baker Boys is a below average flick that treads water for about forty minutes during its midsection. The brothers tickle the ivories convincingly enough, but I found it straightforward to resist Pfeiffer’s alleged show-stopping turn whether cavorting on top of a grand piano or anywhere else. I think I’ll be giving 1980’s The Jazz Singer a miss.

The Commitments (1991)
“This way it’s poetry.”

Perhaps you’ve seen the 1997 Australian comedy The Castle. It depicts a bunch of bogans threatened with the government-sanctioned demolition of their beloved house to make way for an airport. They simply stick to their guns (i.e. a man’s home is his castle) and manage to beat the eviction.

Heart-warming, huh? A combination of integrity, determination and grit can trump the all-powerful system.

Except what The Castle actually shows is that such Aussie battlers wouldn’t have had a hope in hell against the gigantic forces of big business unless an unpaid, retired QC fortuitously took up their case. In short, The Castle’s message is fraudulent.

The Dublin-set The Commitments peddles a similarly confused message. It worships the likes of James Brown, puts tremendous emphasis on authenticity, and routinely ridicules poseurs. Just listen to Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins), a wide boy manager in the mould of Breaking Glass’ Danny, giving a pep talk to the members of his newly formed soul band, The Commitments. “Soul is the rhythm of sex and it’s the rhythm of the factory, too,” he tells them. “The working man’s rhythm… Soul is the music that people understand. Sure, it’s basic and simple, but it’s something else. Something special. Coz it’s honest. That’s it. There’s no fucking bullshit. It sticks its neck out and sings it straight from the heart.” Later (after a minor setback) he underlines the need to be different and to “stand out from the rest of the tossers.”

And yet The Commitments don’t stick their neck out. They’re not different. Why? Because they don’t make the slightest attempt to write and perform their own material. Their first song at a practice session is Mustang Sally. They’re not the ‘saviours of soul’. They’re a fucking covers band, no more impressive or genuine than Blood Pollution so the notion they would attract press attention and interest from the suits is daft. This glaring contradiction at the heart of the band’s ethos undermines what is otherwise a pretty good film.

The Commitments hits a certain tone early on and sticks with it. There’s no melodrama, no attempts at great romance, no gross-out humour. Helped by a cast of unknowns, it never tries to be anything other than earthy and boisterous. Despite all the bad language and people in borderline poverty, it lacks any interest in drugs and crime. This is an amiable, upbeat depiction of blue-collar life filled with scenes set in pubs, churches, abattoirs, living rooms and puddle-filled back streets that ring of truth. Well, maybe not that horse patiently waiting to take a tower block elevator.

The band is fairly well characterised. Its constantly bickering members include a pig-like lead singer, an ageing trumpet player ‘sent by God’ who dabbles in bullshit about rock ‘n’ roll lore, and three blunt female backing singers. Or as one muses about the likely effect of their new, tight dresses on the audience: “What do you think? Will they be eating chips out of our knickers?”

Directed with heart by the hit-and-miss Alan Parker (the bloke that gave us the decent Mississippi Burning and the amusingly bonkers Angel Heart), The Commitments didn’t do well at the box office. Perhaps the thick accents, languid pacing and somewhat fantastical final quarter (e.g. the drummer being abruptly replaced by a psycho bouncer, the over-the-hill trumpet player seducing all three backing singers, and a real-life soul legend taking an interest) had something to do with its failure. Still, it remains far preferable to Parker’s boring Fame and the scattershot, patience-stretching The Wall. It might even have been a classic if it had lopped off twenty minutes and gone the Breaking Glass route by featuring original songs.

Still Crazy (1998)
“I think God got sick of all that seventies excess. That’s why he invented The Sex Pistols.”

A potentially interesting cast can never save a film built on a rotten script. In Still Crazy the idea is workable – a successful 1970s rock band by the name of Strange Fruit reunite – but it’s developed so woefully that I was left praying for a Lynyrd Skynyrd-style plane crash.

It doesn’t help that the circumstances behind the band’s reformation are flimsy, but before you know it Bill Nighy, Timothy Spall, Stephen Rea and Jimmy Nail are off touring Europe to unleash songs like Tequila Mockingbird and trot out whatever cliché you can think of when it comes to past-it musicians and rock ‘n’ roll fables. At best the comedy’s gentle, at worst it’s tired and flabby. I wasn’t engaged by any of the characters or the flick’s increasing earnestness. The original songs fall flat, the Brian Jones/Syd Barrett sub-rumblings don’t work, and I’ll never accept Jimmy Nail as a musician in real life or otherwise. Still Crazy’s second half is atrocious, leaving me at a loss to explain how the flick got nominated for two Golden Globes. Australia copied the idea just as unimpressively eight years later with the reformation of a middle-aged boy band in Boytown.

Slade in Flame (1975)
“I’m no bloody fish finger!”

Slade hit it big in the early seventies when I was beating up the other kids in kindergarten. They then made a mid-Eighties comeback just as I was getting into music and beating up the other kids in high school. Frankly, I’ve never cared for their basic, plodding efforts and I remain unconvinced that vocalist Noddy Holder can actually sing. This didn’t stop the band from being one of Britain’s most successful, with six number one singles and album sales in excess of fifty million.

With that sort of impact, it was no surprise they fancied their chances on the silver screen. What was a surprise, however, was choosing to film such a low-key downer. The fans were unimpressed and stayed away, although Spinal Tap aficionados might get something out of it.

It’s the end of the 1960s and our boys are in rival bands. One is fronted by a frilly-shirted, self-important cock, the other by the wacky vocalist Stoker (Holder). Soon the two bands coalesce into Flame, they’re noticed by a talent scout, signed by a London agency, and their ascent to the top begins.

In other words, it’s old hat. Still, if the direction had been sharper, it might’ve been able to make something of the material. Promising stuff like the band coming under gunfire during a promo appearance at a pirate radio station is fumbled, leaving Slade in Flame to often get sidetracked by its interest in management’s cynical shenanigans. Events move far too fast and the original songs all sound the same. It just isn’t funny or incisive enough, lacking in drugs, groupies and excess.

As for the acting, the down-to-earth members of Slade do OK, but it’s a fairly glum watch more likely to appeal to those who enjoy portraits of working-class Britain. And by that I mean a lot of interactions are set against a backdrop of canals, bingo halls, pigeon coops, factories, social clubs and terraced housing. That’s probably not what you want from a pic about the music biz.

The Doors (1991)
“Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of God.”

Oh, Christ. Oliver Stone. Here goes two and a half hours of my life.

Luckily, I like The Doors. And by that, I mean the band. Sure, they didn’t put out the most consistent albums, let down by some self-indulgent, wanky and mediocre stuff, but at their best they were capable of distinctive, memorable songs. Jim Morrison was an exceptional frontman and the fact the good-looking bastard died so young only added to his tantalising sexiness. A big-budget tale based on his iconic group was inevitable.

But this is the first mistake Stone makes. He calls his movie The Doors, yet it’s not about the band. The other members are relegated to the background, sticking their noses into the odd conversation, but mostly ignored. This is The Jim Morrison Show all the way. Or as a smitten photographer tells the charismatic singer during a session: “Forget The Doors. You’re the one they want. You are The Doors.”

Played well by the lookalike Val Kilmer, the movie wallows in his presence like he’s the Second Coming. And so we have to put up with his continual pretentious babble e.g. “I believe in a prolonged derangement of the senses to obtain the unknown… Our pale reason hides the infinite from us.”

Gawd, shut up, man.

The Doors also maintains our poetry-spouting Lizard King had a death wish. Alas, he doesn’t start prowling the streets blowing away scumbag muggers, instead preferring to ingest an enormous amount of drugs and booze while articulating his gloomy philosophy (“Life hurts a lot more. When you die, the pain’s over” and “C’mon, give me some death!”) This focus on his stinking thinking results in Stone’s biopic getting bogged down in parties, rampant adulation, squabbles, tantrums and yet more pompous dribble. Repeat. Christ, who would’ve thought that being a rock star was so fucking dreary? Instead of enjoying this whirlwind period of his life, Morrison grows increasingly upset that his profundity is somehow being missed. Or as he puts it: “Teenage death girls want my dick, not my words.” Ah, poor Jim, unable to grasp that rock ‘n’ roll (whether you play or listen to it) is supposed to be fun. You know, a blast.

The problem with The Doors is that I don’t get any sense of Stone ever mocking his navel-gazing, oh woe is me subject, apparently enraptured by the man’s late 60s symbolism and pseudo-tragic journey up his own arse. Instead, Morrison comes across as a talented, self-pitying idiot that keeps bumping into lesser idiots, such as a partygoer that gives him a gold telephone to talk to God and one naked, bespectacled lady keen on drinking blood at the ‘right time of the moon’. After an hour or so of The Doors I started thinking that we owe a debt of gratitude to a certain Mr. Manson for so decisively bringing down the curtain on the era’s hippy-dippy bullshit.

The Doors is an overlong, repetitive crock, resulting in it running out of gas well before the hundred-minute mark. It’s preferable to Stone’s later stuff like JFK and the headache-inducing Natural Born Killers, but marks the first of a series of downward steps he took during the nineties. Supporting characters, played by the likes of Michael Madsen and Kyle MacLachlan, have little to do but circle the mighty Morrison (although I did enjoy the ever-drippy Meg Ryan being shut inside a burning closet). The network suits are the usual clueless dweebs, insisting the drug-influenced lyrics of Light My Fire are toned down for a TV appearance just as an unimpressed Hazel O’Connor had to put up with them wanting to change ‘arse’ to ‘bum’ in Breaking Glass. Credibility is also strained by showing out-of-control concerts complete with massive bonfires and fully naked revellers twirling on stage, as if a black mass is imminent.

As you’d expect for such an in-depth portrayal of hedonism, Stone dips into his bag of visual tricks by cutting away to images of stars, deserts and speeded-up clouds. Oh yeah, he also throws in random Indians in a bid to weave a spiritual connection as Mr. Mojo Risin’ tries to break on through to the other side. Morrison sees one at an Andy Warhol party before they end up in San Francisco dancing on stage. It’s almost as if all these Indians have joined the band! This embarrassing attempt at mysticism is far and away the clumsiest aspect of a not very subtle pic to begin with. Mainly, though, the pic fails because I couldn’t wait for the insufferable Morrison to make his Parisian bathtub rendezvous and put me out of my misery.

DAVE FRANKLIN

Dave Franklin is the politically incorrect author of a six-part movie guide.