The worst part is having to hear those crappy songs

Rating: 1/10 (16 September 2001)

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** I'm going to assume that both A) nobody is serious about wanting to REALLY see this movie, and B) nobody who saw it was expecting it to be another Citizen Kane, so, having said that...
It still was horrible. Mark lays down an emotionless performance. Aniston is no more vibrant than her character on Friends, which isn't that different from the one in the movie, really. The best actor in the film was the old British manager guy, who wasn't stellar.
The worst part of this movie, apart from having to hear way too much of the crappy music (nothing like fake old metal songs performed by some studio artist and lip-sinc-ed by Marky Mark) was that there was only script for the half of it.
Here we go - boy likes band, boy tries to be like band, boy loses his band, boy gets to be in his favorite band. This much we knew... and after this point in the film - the little jokes leave, the vicarious excitement leaves, and the cliches take over. The film loses any momentum it had, and people start going to the bathroom, getting more popcorn, talking to their dates, etc. Boy parties too hard, boy loses girl, boy quits band.

Gee, who saw it coming?
Had the film been a true biopic, with legal rights as such, it might have been better. But the "oh, no, we're definately not talking about Judas Priest" act is a little lame. It left me wondering what parts of the film were fact or fiction, if they even interviewed, etc. And the effect was lost -- songs "performed" were (as far as I could tell) fake, not authentic rock songs, outfits were cheezy and lame (Dragons? They came up with Dragons?? Who wears a dragon?), and the viewers couldn't get into the falseness of it. It was as if they started making the movie using Judas Priest's name, songs, and look... then got sued, and had to whitewash it... leaving nothing much behind. That was my take on it. It just felt... awkward.
A more interesting story may have been the heartbreak and tribulations of the "kicked-out-largely-for-coming-out" lead singer.
But instead we get this tired old story that quits halfway through the picture.