what a load of sexist drivel

Rating: 2/10 (12 March 2013)

Admittedly, I'm not the world's biggest fan of Curtis, who has made clichéd mediocre romcoms, but at least those suggested women were real human beings with intentions, minor goals, and agency of their own. But here he hired a cast of very talented actors to make...what? A mess, that's what.
In this muddle of a plot-less celebration of mid-60's pop music (half rock, half insipid pop), there's a boat of talentless hacks who don't have the ability to become musicians or do real and meaningful work or even rebel politically or socially against anything meaningful (their rock and roll is not protest music--it's "let's party" music only), so they play records instead, and then somehow develop groupies who are, for reasons unexplored here, willing to climb aboard a filthy, crowded boat and have sex with these idiots (without getting paid for it!), child-men far uglier than their groupies, boys who don't even seem to have the gumption to ever navigate the boat or lift a finger to do their own cooking or cleaning. They're loathsome, but not in any intentionally amusing way. The movie depicts a world in which women can be groupies, maids, or secretaries only--and to the extent that was true in the 60's, and more true in the rock and roll world than elsewhere--count me glad to be quit of the decade.
There's a cardboard baddie, other cardboard characters I either kept confusing with each other because none is developed, minor clichéd "romance" plots (with zero romance to them), unlikely rescues and no through-plot (unless it's supposed to be a coming of age story in which we don't watch the main character for 80% of the film?) just a mess of clichés tossed together with no tension, no laughs, nothing at risk, and it left me thinking "what the hell were all these actors thinking?" Shame on them for doing this.
The documentary Woodstock had not only better music than this, and depicted the era more accurately, it had more of a coherent *plot* than this. Watch it instead.