Almost Famous
Before boy bands, before Britney Spears, before corporate tie-ins and slick videos, before house music and ecstasy raves, there was arena rock. In the early 1970s, teenage would-be music journalist William Miller (played by newcomer Patrick Fugit) lucks out and finds himself on assignment from Rolling Stone to do a feature story on the emerging band Stillwater. (Think Led Zeppelin, then subtract one or two levels of talent.) Despite the concerns of his academic mother (Frances McDormand) that he will somehow be sucked into the rock world’s vortex of sex and drugs against his will, young William soon finds himself on a tour bus with these memorable guys, traveling from show to show with them, even becoming their friends.
Almost Famous is a highly likeable, even irresistible portrait of a time in American music that, given the current state of pop music, it’s hard not to feel nostalgic for, even if one might have been too young to have been part of it at the time. It was truly the zenith of capital-R Rock, the time that rock came closest to realizing its own self-conscious, bloated stereotypes. Writer-director Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire, Say Anything) perhaps white-washes the harsher elements of this bygone day — those very things that William’s mother fears — and he almost completely glosses over the sexual awakening that young William experiences while on the road with Stillwater, and what that loss of innocence may have meant to William as a person. (If anything, William is too unfailingly nice, too lily-white, for my tastes.)
But Crowe always gives his characters such interesting-such quirky and yet completely human-things to say, that you can forgive him almost anything. Throw in a charismatic lead guitarist (Billy Crudup) and a heartbreakingly charming groupie (Kate Hudson, who deserves the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for which she has been nominated) and you have the makings of a hugely entertaining picture.
by Derek Neff