Actually, this is merely OK

Rating: Null/10 (28 August 2004)

I saw this movie during its original 1998 run and liked it a heck of a lot. I recently took the DVD home from my local library for a repeat viewing and found it lacking in a heck of a lot of ways. Since it places style over substance, I don't think the film has dated very well at all, which is frightening since it's only six years old; somehow it feels much older than that, which is not a good thing in a film that tries to preserve an already-dated movement for all posterity. In particular, the "music video" sequences are not only pretty anachronistic and/or pointless but look absolutely silly now. There are sizeable goofs, gaping plot holes, what little plot there is trods on and on, and in general I feel like I'm being spoon-fed and cliché-beaten far too often while watching this film. The Tommy Stone character, a sort of ridiculous, generic 80s pop-superstar caricature whose musical style or appeal is never shown or explained whatsoever (while every third person on the street is wearing a Tommy Stone mask-- they didn't even do this for Michael Jackson, yo!), is pretty indicative of how this film goes wrong.
Ewan McGregor's performance, as almost everyone has pointed out, is pretty great... although he DOES look way too much like Kurt Cobain, and I think his character paints Iggy Pop in a far-too-positive light. He also upstages pretty much everybody else on screen, including the essentially unlikeable reporter that so many others here seem to enjoy. Everybody else turns in flat or laughably overdone performances (sometimes both!).
The soundtrack to this movie *is* really great and is the only thing that keeps the film from totally collapsing. Lots of especially choice Eno cuts, a bunch of equally wonderful stuff from T. Rex and Roxy Music, some pretty well-done nuevo-glam facsimiles from my boys in Shudder to Think (no one else would have been nearly so capable!), an all-star cast for the on-screen bands (holy cow-- "the Wylde Rats" include original Stooge Ron Asheton... not to mention Mike Watt, Thurston Moore, Steve Shelley, and Don Fleming!), and even a couple of period covers that SHOULD have come off as sacrilegious travesties but manage to largely succeed.
This movie is, I will admit, one of the very few movies that can make gay life look slightly interesting and even a little arousing from a mostly-heterosexual viewer's perspective. But I think that, had the actual subject (glam rock, of course!) been less interesting and the music less well-done, this movie would have been a major dud. I do sort of take issue as well with the "work of fiction based on real-life characters" thing, because-- as with the equally fictional Amadeus-- many folks will go into this movie knowing next to nothing about the artists on whom the characters are closely modeled, and will leave thinking that SOMETHING like this must've actually happened.
Oh, and for a really good time, freeze-frame the DVD every time a newspaper article is shown on-screen and check out the actual text of the article (I was especially amused by the "story" on Slade's cocaine arrest). It's a pretty stunning example of the lack of attention to detail that plagues the film throughout.