'CBGB' movie review: Music is all that saves this rock 'n' roll drama




    
Mike Scott, NOLA.com |   By Newhouse News Service
on October 10, 2013


His marriage hadn't worked out, and neither had his various forays into the music business, so as he headed into his 40s, Hilly Kristal realized he probably only had one gamble left in him He bet everything on a country-music club on the Bowery. Snake eyes, once again.

Except, in spite of himself, eventually it succeeded. And that little dive bar, originally dedicated to country, bluegrass and blues - you know C, BG, B - ended up being the epicenter of the `70s punk-rock explosion, and a brandname for the downtown life.

Until the money people moved in.

Oh well, it was great while it lasted, and "CBGB" is meant partly as a salute to that '70s scene, and partly as a biography of Kristal, who went from a chicken farm in Hightstown to showcasing Patti Smith, the Talking Heads, Blondie and literally thousands of other bands.

So why, with all that material, isn't "CBGB" any better?

Part of that is a lack of focus. The film starts off confidently telling us that punk wasn't born at CBGB at all - that it started in a basement, where two teens were putting together a hand-made fanzine. Except then the movie forgets about them, telling the film in comic-strip style but never developing the teens' characters.


Part two - and this is more of a problem for fans - is that it fudges the details. Yes, Patti Smith played the club in thrift-store boy's clothes - but the song "Because the Night" came years later. Yes, Blondie was a fixture - but Hawthorne's Debbie Harry wasn't yet quite so glam. (And no, as the film itself admits in the credits, Iggy Pop never played there at all.)

The filmmakers are so intent on having us hear the hits and experience the magic, that they forget that all of that success and relative polish came later. At the beginning, these acts were still crude and rude (and many of them, like Kristal's beloved Dead Boys, never changed).

True, even if Malin Akerman is too perfectly made-up as Harry quite a bit of the punk-rock casting is excellent, and sometimes includes offbeat touches (Rupert Grint as Cheetah Chrome? Really?) or in-jokes (Sting's daughter, Mickey Sumner, plays Smith).

Yet even in the world of three-chord rock, the main characters are one-note. Ashley Greene is never anything more than shrill as Kristal's practical daughter, Lisa; Alan Rickman (another quirky choice, certainly) never provides any insight into Kristal, or what he heard in this music or saw as his role in it.

That's not necessarily his fault; dramatic actors do not necessarily make it up as they go along, and had he been given half a character, Rickman could probably have played him. (Think of all the shadings he gave the sardonic Snape.) But it all starts with a script.

It is great fun to hear much of this music again (even if the film deliberately ignores the majority of the club's history, which was devoted to even more hardcore music), and to see some details properly re-created (like the famously filthy bathroom, and the rough plank floor that always seemed to shift under your feet).

But if you really want to remember those times? Get out "Horses." Or "Talking Heads: 77." Or "Blank Generation." Preferably on vinyl, with all the pops and scratches. And play them. Loud.

Note: Newhouse News Service movie critic Stephen Whitty wrote this review.


http://www.nola.com/movies/index.ssf/2013/10/cbgb_movie_review_music_is_all.html...

They should have gotten Mickey Rourke to play Hilly.  One distraction I can spot in the trailer is too many Brits (or Brit colonists) for this NYC story.

People ought to check out one of the best rock movies, 24-Hour Party People, the story of Tony Wilson and Factory Records, Manchester.  That picture fudges history, too - but with wit and great panache.