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Created Jul 08, 2007 07:02PM PST • Edited Jan 15, 2021 10:31PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Backstage Pass To Rock & Roll Valhalla. Rock and roll voyeur trip. Great performances, including then new star Kate Hudson. Funny, witty script.

   Cameron Crowe is a monster talent, and apparently has been one since he started writing for Rolling Stone as a mere pup of 15. This lovingly personal reflection, thinly veiled though it may be, is flat out terrific. For anyone who loves rock and roll, or came of age in the 70s, or enjoys watching a love triangle, this is a great, great movie.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

5. Male Stars Very Good 3.5

   The rock stars are perfectly drawn ‘Golden Gods’ as Crowe embarrassingly has them call themselves in a moment of unintended enlightenment. ‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely,’ and these guys have it: wealth, freedom, fame, sex appeal. It is all about them in their own elevated cocoon. Everyone else is warming up for the second half of what Tom Wolfe came to call the Me Decade, and rock stars were the path breakers for the rest of society.

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

   Of course the new star to emerge from this movie was Kate Hudson, who made a major debut playing a preternaturally centered ‘band aid’ (a.k.a. groupie) who survives her delusions in grand rock princess style. She leads a like-minded coterie of girls who are willing accomplices to institutionalized statutory conjugation. Elton’s “Tiny Dancer,” their ode, is played a couple of times to drive home the point.

   Kate Hudson has a great movie star head, an appellation usually reserved for lions like Bogie or Jack Palance (Billy Crystal noted this about Palance following City Slickers.) or even her ‘Dad’, Kurt Russell. But she’s got one. Call her a young lioness, gold tresses and all. But it’s not just the tresses. It is her mouth, especially her grin. Kate Hudson’s grin starts with her mouth narrow and closed. Then it magically widens across her face, still a closed line, now enclosed in parentheses where this wondrous organ meets her cheeks. Finally, her bottom lip lowers, majestically revealing perfect rows of gleaming whiteness. And in this third act, when her movie star grin opens wide, you can see the same world class adorableness of Goldie Hawn, her Mom. Her performance in Almost Famous made her the most obvious and deserving new movie star of the day.

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

   Crowe’s Mom (Actually his alter ego’s Mom, but we can cut through the pretense here.) is an exemplar of 1960’s academic idealism. In other words, she radiates lit-class enlightenment, minus the loose morals that her son encounters on the road with a bunch of rock gods. Played in typical bravura fashion by the estimable Frances McDormand (Fargo), she demonstrates why greatness often emerges from strong – even too strong – parenting.

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Great 4.0

11. Direction Very Good 3.5

    One of my favorite filmmakers, Cameron Crowe is the creative force behind a remarkable string of fresh and fun movies, including Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the best T&Z movie ever made, and the sparkling Jerry Maguire. Almost Famous is his fond reflection on the boyhood start he stumbled through as a professional writer.

    This classic in the Crowe canon delivers his trademark fly-on-the-wall observation of a modern, highly privileged subculture. This time, of course, it is the traveling circus and movable feast that is big time rock and roll, complete with the hangers on that superficially validate its importance. As usual, the details feel perfect, and the characters foibles and conceits are clearly drawn and comically exposed.

12. Play Very Good 3.5

13. Music Perfect 5.0

    The music is terrific, both the included real rock and roll (Who. Zep. Chipmunks. What, you don’t think Alvin conveyed a perfect rock and roll spirit?), and the concert scenes, which easily convey the power and the glory of rock and roll.

    This is a new side of Cameron Crowe, who shares song writing credits with his wife and sister in law, the Wilson sisters from Heart (themselves a onetime great r n r band). Musical credits also go to ‘technical advisor’ Peter Frampton, who, more than anyone except Elton, personifies the vacuous explosion that overcame rock music in the mid to late 70s, and that the movie foretells.

14. Visuals Very Good 3.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.1

17. Sex Erotic 3.0

18. Violence Gentle 1.0

19. Rudeness Salty 2.5

21. Reality

    Glib 1.1

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.5

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0