.jpg)
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Distributor: Scoops Films
Distributor: Scoops Films
Release Date: 25th September 2014
Running Time: 89 Minutes
Director: John Williams
Cast: Luke Perry, Tom Galitzine, Lisa Dillon
Running Time: 89 Minutes
Director: John Williams
Cast: Luke Perry, Tom Galitzine, Lisa Dillon
Luke Perry is a name synonymous with the 90’s, teen dramas and cheekbones. Of course Perry has been working since the 90’s but we’ll never forget him in Beverley Hills 90210 and movies like Buffy The Vampire Slayer. This is Perry’s first foray into British independent cinema in a new film by John Williams (Hibernation, Paraphernalia shorts) which is receiving it’s debut at Raindance Film Festival 2014.
Tom (Nick Galitzine) is a loner living with his Christian mother Mary (Lisa Dillon). Tom is learning guitar secretly behind his mum’s back and has big dreams of competing in the school’s Battle of the Bands, if only he can get over his chronic shyness. Luke Perry plays Max Stone, a rock star who has disappeared and presumed dead after his tax evasion scams became public and his three-year-old child died in his swimming pool.
Max is living as Stuart in South London living on disability allowance for an undisclosed condition which means he has trouble playing guitar and has a pretty nifty cane. Max moves in next door to Tom and Mary and straight away his loud music and pot smoking infuriates Mary, and excites Tom. Tom does a bit of sleuthing to work out who Max is, and straight away is on a mission to get Max to be his teacher in the art of rock and roll. The film then follows Tom’s basic blackmail to convince Max to help him rock, and Max’s acceptance of the challenge.
At their first lesson, Tom has to play in another room as he’s too shy to play in front of Max. Whilst Tom is playing, Max gives him advice and really goes to town on ironing one tea towel. It was sincerely a real joy to see Luke Perry playing an ageing rock star and ironing, but really that tea towel was done in the first five seconds of the scene (and also rock star or not, who irons tea towels?).
The film has these rather odd music scenes which I’m not really sure what they’re trying to do with. With Max being a “90’s grunge thrash” musician, the songs are rather 90’s, but not really grungy and there’s none of the current 90’s trends that you would maybe expect. The song scenes are shot like music videos, there’s one song where Tom is singing about the devil taking him to hell and the whole video is kinda dated graphics of him being driven to hell by the devil. It’s so literal that any resonance of the song had is slightly lost.
The majority of the film’s music was written and produced by a production company who also created the music for Dancing With The Stars. I’m sure that using a production company is great for a film maker as it gives you more freedom than working with a band, however the songs do lack an authenticity and it’s all a bit safe. The legendary producer Tony Visconti is listed as a Music Supervisor on the IMDB, however from what I gather that amounted him to producing a few songs on the soundtrack.
However Nick Galitzine’s singing is nice and both him and Perry play the guitar in the movie. Nick has a Soundcloud where you can hear some of his own songs https://soundcloud.com/nickygalitzinemusic and has that vocal style that a lot of these young singer songwriter types have these days. I’m sure that this wont be the last the world sees of him whether it’s music or acting.
Luke Perry is generally great in it and really translates the grief that the character feels well and some of the scenes between Max and Tom also are very well played. however on the whole, the film lacks conviction.
Making a film involving music, which is authentic and speaks to music fans is a really tricky task and very few music films hit the mark. The films that do, really know their music inside out and poke fun at it in some ways, in the way that say High Fidelity or Almost Famous did. This film takes itself a bit too seriously and needed to lighten up and have a bit of fun with the concept. Maybe they could have played up to Max Stones’ normal life more, maybe Perry could’ve done some more ironing or a spot of hovering?
★★
No comments:
Post a Comment