Once you run out of content, fill it up with songs...

Rating: Null/10 (28 October 2002)

Dammit. This movie had SO much potential. As a matter of fact, at first I couldn't understand the several negative reviews on here, as I watched the first 20 or so minutes--which were hilarious!--then had to take a break to do a few things, eat dinner, etc., and then went back to the movie...oh, plus another thing I did in the meantime was get online and check out the reviews, which I couldn't understand what the deal was.
Mark Wahlberg, of course, plays Chris, singer of a cover--er, that's right, "TRIBUTE"--band that performs Steel Dragon tunes, a fictitious heavy metal group back in the 80s. Even though a lot have dissed Wahlberg due to his acting, I was actually going to sing (pardon the pun) severe praise for him, since he spent a year and a half growing his hair long for the part, which in all actuality, he couldn't stand; he said during an interview once that it was like a "bat flying in my face". He also looked like he was having the time of his life singing and banging his head along in his car and being onstage, which in fact he can't stand heavy metal in real life...now THAT'S acting, if you ask me!! If you think his acting is poor, do YOU think you could go onstage in a movie and pretend to really get into playing some music you hate, like country or rap (if you don't like them, that is...I like some rap myself), especially with having to do several takes per scene? Right, I thought so.
I was also going to commend about how real this movie was, due to the fact that not all of us heavy metal people live in caves, don't get up until noon and stay up until 2 a. m. to play in some god-forsaken little club (after sacrificing a goat, of course)...no, Chris also works in an office too, and even sings in a church choir (probably a nod to Axl Rose of Guns 'n Roses when he sang in a church choir also, although that was when he was a little kid). About the only gripe I had was that they overdid a few things, like Chris' headbanging parents; possible--after all, they survived the 60s--but a bit silly.
But then I settled down and watched the rest of it. WAY too many songs. As it's been mentioned here repeatedly, another music movie, Almost Famous, is compared to this, which had the right amount of songs, not going on for too long or repeating them to death...and I'm not slamming those tunes since they weren't metal, as I like pretty much all kinds of music, including those, and they only went on for a minute or two before they switched to something else...here they (the filmmakers) obviously couldn't think of much to do with the script, so they just threw in the songs, skipping around the movie and all, just like when, during a "break", Chris brings in some demo tapes and drawings he made of what he thought would make it to the next Steel Dragon album, not knowing that one of the guitarist's and manager (I think it was) had already written all of the songs. Tension is mounting, but they didn't really do anything to make it feel like it was building up over time: how long was this "break" anyway? We have no idea, so that also tosses aside character development (or not).
* MINOR SPOILERS * This also leads to Chris changing musical direction, which wasn't believable, as we had no idea that he liked anything other than metal, so here it's a bit of a cop-out, to suddenly throw that in. However, it IS pretty funny what happens to the original singer of Steel Dragon (ha ha!) and all. Chris also doesn't do drugs and the former Steel Dragon singer tells him that he doesn't do drugs either and that he's in bed by 11:30 every night, yet Chris immediately becomes trashed after his first Steel Dragon gig, and continues with that lifestyle...sorry, if you haven't done drugs after all this time, why would you suddenly just dive right into them? Also unbelievable is having every tiny thing that happens to Steel Dragon winds up on the news...however, it's not identified what station is running these reports, as it could be MTV, which IS possible, I suppose.
Anyway, it was good to see not only Zakk Wilde's name as one of the producers (one of Ozzy Osbourne's guitarists), but then when I found out other famous metal musicians also played band members in this movie (Jeff Pilson from Dokken, even though I got tired of them a long time ago), that was even better. It's also nice to go back to your beginnings, as it's been forever since I've listened to anything less heavy than death metal and grindcore, but I forgot how good some of the "regular" metal is too (i. e. where they have frontmen that actually SING, that is). Jennifer Anniston is also good, but this didn't do well (well, besides it being so mixed) since it had a limited audience to begin with, since obviously the only people who will see this are those that are into hard rock and heavy metal only, a bit like how people will see Minority Report because it had a huge budget, Tom Cruise, and it was directed by Steven Spielburg, yet those same people aren't suddenly going to decide that sci-fi is cool and will turn around and see all of the Star Trek movies (just like how none of us metal people are going to decide to see pop star Mariah Carey's movie Glitter...barf!).
Oh well, it's best to see this in the video format, since if it doesn't work on you, then you can just turn it off and do something else, then get back to it later, rather than being trapped in a movie theatre for two hours and having to see the whole thing then. At least they tried; there aren't a lot of heavy metal movies out there for us now, are there?