Cameron Crowe's finest hour to date? (Almost Famous (DVD))

Member Name: kevin121

Product:	Almost Famous (DVD)
Date:	12/12/08 (57 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The acting by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Frances McDormand

Disadvantages: None really

The film opens in San Diego, 1969. A young boy's passion for music is fuelled by his big sister's rebellion against their quirky mother who thinks all rock and roll music is about is "drugs and promiscuous sex". The sister elopes with her boyfriend at 18 and leaves her brother all her records.

We then skip forward and meet the boy (William) as a 14 year old in 1973. He writes for the school magazine and when he hears Rolling Stone magazine's infamous journalist Lester Bangs is in town giving a radio interview, he waits outside the station to meet him. This initial meeting proves to be a catalyst in the schoolboy's life. He manages to land an assignment from Rolling Stone magazine to interview a new rock bank called Stillwater and so begins an amazing journey for a small town schoolboy who gets drawn into their inner circle.

This film is a cross between a coming of age drama and a rock and roll film and Cameron Crowe managed to take a somewhat tired plot and make it ring true. In my opinion, even people who couldn't care less about rock music will enjoy this film because it's not so much about the music as it is about life and the coming of age of one young boy.

The main cast:
Frances McDormand- William's Mother

Billy Crudup - Stillwater band leader Russell Hammond
Kate Hudson- Penny Lane, leader of the 'Band aids'

Patrick Fugit- William
Philip Seymour Hoffman - Lester Bangs

Anna Paquin - Polexia Aphrodisia.
And special guest appearance by Peter Frampton (looking scarily like a Bee Gee).

The soundtrack to Almost Famous is reflective of the overall atmosphere of the film with lots of early seventies stuff, most of which I'm not familiar with, but of the singers I recognised there was Simon & Garfunkel, The Beach Boys, Rod Stewart, Led Zeppelin, Elton John and David Bowie.

Many of the great lines in the film belong to Frances McDormand, and although her performance as the overprotective mother is fantastic, in my opinion Mr Hoffman acts everyone else off the screen - he's a hugely underated actor who can turn himself to just about any role (who amongst us can forget the 'shart' scene in another of his films?). Here he plays a world weary, razzled journalist who's been there, done that and got the t-shirt. A special mention should also be made of Patrick Fugit, who's first role this was, and who manages to capture the emotion of qawky teenage kid caught between a fuddy duddy mum and the world of uber-cool rock stars and their hangers-on perfectly. You can't help feeling for him.

About the dvd:
It's 118 minutes long, it's in widescreen and has 5.1 Surround sound. When you reach the main menu the five choices are: subtitles (English, Spanish and Portuguese); scene selection; audio set up; special features or simply play movie.

*Special Features*
You have a choice of four theatrical trailers of different movies here one of which is this one;
Stillwater's "Fever Dog" music video; and
A HBO behind the scenes featurette called 'The making of Almost Famous'. This last choice is about 15 minutes long if my memory serves me right, and is really worthwhile watching in my opinion as it contains interviews with Peter Frampton, Kate Hudson, Frances McDormand, Patrick Fugit, Philip Seymour Hoffman and of course Cameron Crowe. Cameron explains that this is a film which is close to his heart because it is basically autobiographical - Cameron was a budding journo as a teenager and reporting for Rolling Stone magazine himself. As he says: "that was me at that exact same spot". As a consequence this film is very well written and directed by him.
We also see some photos of him with Kris Kristofferson, Robert Plant, Rod Stewart, the Allman Brothers, Neil Young and David Crosby.

Overall:
This might sound trite if this kind of movie isn't to your taste, but in my opinion Almost Famous is funny, touching, and one of those rare movies that makes you feel like you've gained something just for having seen it. As Lester Bangs says "Rock and Roll is dead", which is a shame because Cameron Crowe managed to revive it just for short while with this move. I would definitely recommend it.

Summary: Rock and Roll film at it's best.