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Almost Famous

Almost Famous

List Price: $14.99
Your Price: $11.24
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Whats all the excitement about?
Review: Almost Famous... "almost" a decent movie, too bad it was so boring and had little excitement. The movie just was a consistant theme of "blah, bad music and drugs". Check it out and see how bad the movie really is.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Such A Letdown...Here's Why
Review: Maybe I expected something different. I grew up in the 70's and to this day it is still my favorite music to listen to.

I thought this movie was going to somehow capture that feeling. Not through some cheezy nostalgia trip, but through interesting characters and plot lines.

The soundtrack is good, but it is WASTED on an inexplicably boring and lame story line. No offense Cameron, but your life just wasn't as interesting to me as I think it was to you. It just seemed to me like you were hanging with the most boring rock band ever.

Really...this movie is not worth your time. If you don't believe me, rent it before you buy it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Deja Vu
Review: This movie took me back to the late seventies, when I was a teenager just like the main character. There was not a false note in any of the characters or the performances. Cameron Crowe wrote a love letter to my peers and I fell in love.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The best movie EVER
Review: I have never in my life seen a movie that enthralled me as much as 'Almost Famous.' By far, this is Cameron Crowe's best effort yet. This story details the life of a fifteen year old music critic at the "end" of the true era of "rock and roll." Fantastic.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: All That's worth watching
Review: This sweet coming of age tale follows newcomer Patrick Fugit's cross country journey with a 70's rockband by the name of Stillwater. The film is based on director Cameran Crowe's real life experience (also the director of Say Anything, Jerry Maguire, Singles) as the youngest journalist ever to work for Rolling Stone.
He goes to a high school where the kids hate him. He has a mother whose somewhere in between June Cleaver and someone Norman Bates would be bratteling on about. He also has a personal relationship with the Roger Ebert of music critics Lester Bangs.
Lester Bangs invites young William to interview Black Sabbath for him. Instead he runs into the band Stillwater, and the alluring Penny Lane (played by Kate Hudson). When Rolling Stone offers him a chance to travel with the band, and do an interview, William jumps at it.
Ultimately what makes a Cameran Crowe movie worth seeing isn't the plot details, but the characterizations and tender moments of humanity his films provide. Crowe is able to illicit an emotion from his audience without feeling the need to beat his audience over the head with it.
Also, the wonderful performances provided by Kate Hudson, Billy Crudup, Jason Lee, Frances McDormand, Fairuza Balk, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Patrick Fugit provide more quality acting then three years worth of Oscar ceremonies.
Almost Famous is a funny entertaining, and moving film. It is the quality of this film that won it the Golden Globe for Best Picture and has appeared on over 250 critic's top ten lists. It's a movie with an undefinable quality, but will stick in your memory long after you've left the theatre.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Rock and Roll Lives
Review: The year is 1973 and contrary to popular belief, Rock and Roll is far from dead. Almost Famous is the story of fifteen-year-old William Miller and his journalistic journey to capture the lives of the rock group, Stillwater, for Rolling Stone magazine. Through William's adolescent eyes, we get a behind the scenes look at a mid-level rock band and the struggles they go through as a group.

Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical screenplay is superb and the actors bring each and every one of his characters to life. Frances McDormand is great as William's eccentric and over-protective mother, Elaine. McDormand will have you laughing with her "just say no to drugs" speeches. Billy Crudup portrays Stillwater's lead guitarist "Russell Hammond" just the way you would picture a rock star to be: cool, confident and temperamental. Patrick Fugit also gives a good performance as the wide-eyed and innocent William, while Kate Hudson gives great energy to the worldly teen Miss Penny Lane.

Almost Famous was definitely one of the best films of 2000. There have been many movies about Rock and Roll, but Almost Famous is different. Almost Famous humanizes rock stars and lets the viewer see what their world of drugs, sex, fame and music is all about. If you are looking to see a movie with great acting, great music and a great script, then look no more, you've found it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Warm, sweet and brilliant
Review: Every time they do a writer story I get all choked up. This is like Shakespeare in Love only different. Like Shakespeare in Love? WHAT? Well, we have a writer as the hero. And...? And he's in love. And...? Okay the rest is different except that he's really working hard to be a success and he's around performers and... Anyway "it's all happening." By the way, that should be "It's all happening at the zoo" a lyric from the Simon and Garfunkel album in the opening scene.

Okay, okay. I'm having a little trouble with this one. I thought it was just so, so cute, and so touching and warm, even though I know it's only "[my] rock and roll fantasy." However I don't care. I watched practically the whole thing with tears in my eyes, partially from nostalgia from the music and the clothes and the hair styles done so perfectly, and partly because the story of "Penny Lane," sweet flower child groupie, "seamstress for the band" (to borrow a lyric) who has a "rock and roll record" to borrow another lyric (Great White, this time) who wears her sophistication on her sleeve to cover her heart that's also there. And for a slightly nerdish kid who grows up before our eyes and falls in love and is too young to really be loved in return, a nervous writer on his first assignment who overwrites and sees the best in people, even as they treat him like a little girl, a kid who is so, so unsure of himself. (Is writer and director Cameron Crowe again reprising his youth as he did so well in the script for the now classic coming of ager, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)?)

Kate Hudson (Goldie Hawn's daughter) is unforgettable in a completely original creation dreamed up (or better yet, probably remembered) by Crowe, who here improves on his fine directorial work in Jerry Maguire (1996). I understand that Sarah Polley (The Sweet Hereafter 1997) was originally picked to play the part of Penny Lane, and she is a fine talent, but quite frankly Kate Hudson stole all the scenes she was in (she learned it from her mother!) and I don't think the movie would have been quite the beguiling, bittersweet experience it was without her.

Billy Crudup (a name to look at twice) manages to look exactly like all the wanna-be rock stars of the seventies wished they had while exuding the kind of charm that breaks hearts as Russell Hammond, guitarist for the band and Penny's true love. Patrick Fugit is William Miller the would be teenaged writer as hero who is charming, boyish, vulnerable and well, heroic. Frances McDormand plays his mother with just the right combination of pigheaded earnestness and her unique sense of the comedic.

The entire cast was terrific and the characters were truly original. The Academy Award winning script was clever and at times profound, interspersed with sparkling lines. (My favorite, from Lester Bangs on William's school mates: "You'll meet them all again on their long journey to the middle.") Also, and this is important, Crowe paid close attention to detail throughout and never lost his concentration. Everything seemed amazingly authentic right down to the floral stitch on Russell's shirts and the bottles of Jack Daniels in his hands. And nothing was done in a routine manner. Every scene was carefully planned and even minor characters were roundly developed. I'm thinking in particular of Lester Bangs, mentor and cynical rock critic brought to life in a fine performance by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and William's sweet and slightly dippy sister, vividly portrayed by Zooey Deschanel. Notice how Crowe even took the trouble to satirize flight attendants with the parody of the stewardess uniforms (day glow orange!).

Yes, I loved this film, and I predict that the Academy, whose members obviously did not really SEE this film, will be rewarding the producers sometime down the road for the oversight.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Almost Aimless
Review: "If you light a candle and listen to Tommy, you'll see your future". We hear this line repeated over a breathtaking early scene, closing in on the turntable, panning over writing, pete townshend strumming in the background . . .

But then the rest of the movie, instead of being his "future", turns out to be a boring film diary of goofball antics on the road-- sort of a "Summer School" type movie with much more pretention. Of course there are a few funny moments-- Billy Crudup on the roof shouting "I am a golden god!"; the deflowering scene is amazing. Phillip Seymour Hoffman's performance also lends the film a lot of quality and cred (I think he should ask for it back). But ultimately, we've got this doe-eyed kid who never says a sentence more than three words long, and we're expected to believe he's a wunderkind music journalist. Furthermore, this movie has all the emotional content of the song "Do you believe in magic?" Sitting through it was like chewing gum for way, way too long.

Don't tell me I'm taking the movie too seriously. It took itself seriously, and then couldn't deliver.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Great Movie
Review: I gave this one star beceause no ones reads the ones with more than 2. This was the best movie I have ever seen. If you liked this movie I recomened the movies Gettysburg and The Green Mile. The guy from Dumb and Dummber is in Gettysburg. This movie Almost famous has a great story line and a great happy ending. I also recomend the movie The Lengand Of Bagger Vance staring Will Smith.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Almost Entertaining...
Review: The biggest letdown of a movie I have seen in a while. The lead character (ie Cameron Crowe as a boy) is way to perfect to be believeable. The movie was shallow and boring. The only character remotely interesting was "Lester Bangs". Somehow, I remeber the 70's as being distinctly different.


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