What does it really take to be great?

Rating: 9/10 (17 March 2000)

I heard lukewarm reviews about this movie, but I thought it was one of the best movies to come out in '99.
Allen seems to have lazily spun a tale of a minor player in the history of music. Emmett Ray is the stuff of legend, he turned up on the scene, cut some sides, and little is known for sure about his life. Allen fills in the blanks though.
One of the things I liked most was the Django Reinhardt thread, that weaved its way through the whole movie, and made for some of the funniest bits. I won't ruin the movie by talking about it here.
But the movie did seem to be sort of spinning its tires, without a real point, until the last 10 minutes. In that time it goes from being a mildly funny showcase for some GREAT! jazz music to being a statement about what it sometimes takes to be a great artist, and the often tragic irony of this truth.
Thinking about it now, Allen also sort of parodies the documentary format here, in that all the "modern" people on camera talking about Emmett Ray really know very little about his life, and the biographical sequences make the viewer the insider, so to speak.