Only for the Serious Bob Fan ( Minus the Richard Gere scene )

Rating: 7/10 (3 December 2007)

Just got back and I gotta say that it's probably only for serious fans of the whole Dylan mythos..... I couldn't imagine NOT knowing about Woody Guthrie, his motorcycle crash, getting called "Judas", his conversion etc and making either heads or tails of this ( my wife fell asleep )....
But I, at first, thought I died and went to heaven!! I loved the black kid playing young Bob... a very inspired casting call... Christian Bale, though, as the young folkie Bob, wasn't acted very well; to me, he seemed more like Cosmo Kramer playing a "hipster doofus!"
But, of course, Cate Blanchett's performance was everything that has been said -- and more! She captures Mercury Bob's weird crackling energy in beautifully filmed amphetamine black and white, and seeing the whole "Don't Look Back" vibe fictionalized was better than stumbling on "Eat This Document"clips on YouTube....better! Watching him and his "Hawks" barnstorm through England ( the scene with the Beatles is tremendous fun ) only to get called Judas AS FILM was unbelievably intense, and David Cross as Allen Ginsberg was perfectly hilarious....
The Heath Ledger divorce years were good, but the film horribly jumped the shark with the Richard Gere Outlaw Bob-in-Hiding scenes. They were awful. So awful I was squirming in my seat, wishing the whole thing was over...
If only the whole movie would have been Blanchett's...