Sean and Allen had me fooled completely, ready to believe.

Rating: 7/10 (25 March 2005)

This is one of those films where you curse the hero for being a no-goodnick in personal life while being a great musician, only to find out --much later -- that he never even existed. Very good. Considering that Sean Penn did not have a real person to model his acting upon, he did his customary super job - acting out a recent fictional character and making him believable is no mean accomplishment. I have never been a great fan of Woody Allen (he grates on me) but in this film Woody was bearable by his minimal participation. Also, both of the women characters were superbly portrayed. One gets to wonder why such good films don't achieve high ticket sales. Perhaps today's audiences just want to be titillated rather than entertained.