Maybe I Missed Something-Maybe This Film Missed The Target

Rating: 3/10 (24 July 2007)

I was looking forward to seeing this film. I'm familiar with JB and KG's music and thought it was great, if a little on the coarse side and having one or two more fecks than it should have.
However right from the start this film just didn't sit with me. There's was no background on JB and we were thrown right into this scenario we had to take as read. Were we expected to fit this character into the mould of any other angst teen who wanted to be a rockstar? This film missed all the great clichés and funny stuff associated with rock music and being a budding musician. OK Spinal tap, Bill & Ted and Wayne's World has already covered those bases and that kind of makes you think why make this film? It was like a badly written Dumb and Dumber with guitars.
The story and delivery were constantly stilted and the more I watched the more I thought this was aimed at 12 year olds, so what about all the foul language? Back to the story, the pick of destiny...it wasn't even original or absorbing. The pizza guy was a stoodge and some of the musical material in the film was quite bad. The Tim Robbins character was great but for me he didn't fit nicely into the film and stuck out like a sore thumb. My favourite bit was the Ben Stiller scene in the music shop, I thought at that point the film was beginning to come to life and take shape a bit but it just seemed to nosedive after that. I kept thinking 'that would have been great to do that there' and so on and I feel they missed many opportunities to expand the characters and story and make it a bit more engaging.
The climax and resolution of the film just fell flat for me. The music was rubbish and I got the impression JB was just on some kind of rock God trip, trouble is he lacks the looks, musical ability and presence of said God. The slight comic relief, relief from KG was as wooden as his acoustic guitar. Probably the most empty film I've seen in ages, the whisp of an idea stretched out to 90 mins with such thin content it should never have got passed the development stage and should've been binned. At least in Waynes World we had sympathy for and loved the characters and at least in Spinal Tap we laughed for 20 years. This will go down as the proverbial crock for the majority of people.
Would have made a far better batch of quick 3 minute youtube videos or a simple straight to DVD release to 'D' fans, but at least it kept some people in work!