Finishes on a high 'note', but it's heavily flawed and almost intolerable to sit through for the most part

Rating: 3/10 (19 June 2015)

In some ways this was quite a strange film as it has virtually no build-up; we start with Andrew (Miles Teiler) playing the drums for a few minutes before his eventual mentor Terrence Fletcher (J.K Simmons) walks in and observes Andrew playing the drums. After liking what he hears, Terrence offers Andrew a place in his band....
Not only do the problems start for Andrew at this point, but it's at the point where the band first assemble that I started to have problems with this film...
For the next 80 minutes all we have here is Terrence Fletcher - man of mystery; so what do we know about him? Well he's a man that seems to be sponsored by Accurist, he's a combination of the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket and Simon Cowell or Nasty Nigel Lythgoe. The majority of the film shows the band playing music (admittedly I initially liked this aspect of the film, but it was repetitive and wore thin after a while) then we have Fletcher shouting at his students, putting them down etc. The only thing that was moderately entertaining about the first 80 minutes was hearing Fletcher's put downs, but after 80 minutes of it I was losing the will to live. Think about hearing some of Simon Cowell's put downs on the X Factor; it's fun for about 5 minutes, but hearing an 80 minute omnibus edition on You Tube would drive me insane.
The film even fails for me at a very basic level; it isn't entertaining enough to make it fun to watch, it isn't fleshed out enough to make it a good character study or social commentary and for the most part it isn't interesting enough to keep you involved in the story.
There are some other things that had me puzzled such as; what was the point of Fletcher asking Andrew to be there at 6am only for Andrew to turn up late and then Fletcher not be there? This thread was opened up without purpose. I also loved the fact that Fletcher claimed he knew that Andrew made him lose his job at the Schaeffer conservatory of music, but given the fact that he mistreated almost every student he taught how could he possibly know that it was Andrew that dropped him in it?
This isn't a total shambles and it is, at least, fairly well made and Simmons is very good in his respective role and did at least not render the film totally unwatchable. Where Whiplash really comes good is in the final 15 minutes and in these 15 minutes we get more revelations here than we did throughout the 90 minutes or so that proceeded it. It was rather unexpected to watch Fletcher be prepared to sabotage his own big night just to show Andrew as being incompetent. To then see Andrew come back and show us some of his best drumming was absolutely fantastic. It's a pity that the earlier parts of this film did not have the same passion and intensity as the last 15 minutes.
Ultimately, this is meant to show the pressure of show business and it's also about how being too self-absorbed can affect not only your own life, but the lives of others around you. It's just a shame that for the majority of its running time Whiplash tackles this in a repetitive and dull manner that offers little insight, commentary or entertainment. It does all three aspects to an extent in the last 15-20 minutes, but for me it was a case of too little too late.