Film Review: Almost Famous (2000)

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drax3 years ago5 min read

(source: tmdb.org

There isn’t that many film makers in Hollywood whose careers were built on projects that could be described as autobiographical. One of those is writer and director Cameron Crowe whose first major success was script for Fast Times at Ridgemont High, adaptation of his own book dedicated to experiences as an undercover reporter in a high school. His most acclaimed screen work, 2000 period drama Almost Famous, was even more autobiographical.

The plot begins in 1973 San Diego whree 15-year old William Miller (played by Patrick Fugit) lives with her mother Elaine Miller (played by Frances McDormand), teacher who can’t stand rock music. William who has a wunderkind skipped few grades is, however, using rock music as source of his income. He writes rock-related articles for local underground newspapers. This brings attention of Lester Bangs (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman), highly influential rock critic of Creem magazine. He takes William under his wing and gives him task to write article about Black Sabbath. During the concert William meets and befriends members of Stillwater, band that serves as opening act. Thanks to this he gets task to follow Stillwater on a tour and write an article that would be published in prestigious magazine Rolling Stone. Much to his mother’s horror, he accepts the job and at first it looks like it would be a pleasant experience. Idyll, however, begins to fade away for two reasons. One is falling in love with Penny Lane (played by Kate Hudson), beautiful groupie who is also girlfriend of band’s leader Russell Hammond (played by Billy Crudup). The other is dilemma whether to remain friends with band members or write objectively about their music.

For many rock music enthusiasts 1970s were supposed to continue the anti-establishment rebellion of the previous decades. From today’s perspective, 1970s are mostly seen as an age of hedonism, disco and betrayal of “high” ideals. Cameron Crowe, who experienced the era, appears, just like the protagonist of his film, to be torn between show things as they were or as what he would like them to be. On one side, it would be hard to attack film for the lack of authencity; the character of William Miller is based on Crowe himself and all Wililiam’s adventures are based on Crowe’s experiences while working with Rolling Stone and covering bands like The Who and Eagles. Although disclaimer states that all characters (with exception of Penny Lane) are fictional, Lester Bangs and Ben Fong-Torres (played by Terry Chen) are historical personalities. Crowe paid great deal to authentic details like costumes, while Nancy Wilson, acclaimed rock musician and Crowe’s wife, wrote songs of fictional Stillwater band in a manner indistinguishable from rock songs that ruled the charts in early 1970s. On the other hand, this authencity is compromised with mild, almost antiseptic, treatment of the dark underbelly of early 1970s rock scene – band member always fight but always reconcile; groupies are never exploited; whole story about drugs is reduced to “grass” and a harmless little trip or two; the only overdose that happens in film doesn’t anything to do with drugs. Many critics for this reason stated that Almost Famous was “rock’n’roll fairytale”, but this didn’t prevent them to give high marks to Crowe’s work, claiming that Disneyficitation of rock history isn’t betrayal of artistic vision.

But, even if we consider that Crowe, as a witness to the era, might have his own version of events that might or might not be true, Almost Famous is weaker film that some of Crowe’s earlier works like

. In an attempt to fuse his adventures into coherent plot, Crowe tries to create drama where drama shouldn’t be. So, we are forced to see Miller family quarrells, William’s desperate and ultimately boring attempts to obtain interview from Russell and Rolling Stone rejecting William’s article. Humour in the film isn’t of particularly good quality; for example, none of the jokes will be as remembered as some of dialogues during which characters speculate about future of Mick Jaegger or praise modem technology. Even the plane scene, allegedly inspired by real events, looks forced. Many of the characters seem to be written only to allow some “cool” names like Anna Paquin, Fairuza Balk or Jason Lee to appear in the cast. On the other hand, young Patrick Fugit is very good in his role (which would have been played by Tobey Maguire if Maguire was younger). Same can be said for Billy Crudup. But the best impression is left by Kate Hudson who had fortune to play the best written role, mixing joy of life with some darker tones. Hudson not only invests a lot of irresistible charm into her character and her Golden Globe for Best Actress in Supporting Role is well-deserved. While the same thing might be a matter of debate in case of Crowe winning Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, Almost Famous is mostly pleasant experience, even for audience that isn’t particularly nostalgic towards early 1970s and music of those times.

RATING: 6/10 (++)