STILL CRAZY (1998)
A Film Review
Copyright Dragan Antulov 2004
Rock'n'roll is one of the most overrated cultural achievements of 20th
Century. At least this is the impression the author of this review gets
when he sees how once undisputed gods of music and their work
fare in the world dominated by the likes of Britney Spears and
Marilyn Manson. One of the rare positive things to come out of that
sorry state of affairs is STILL CRAZY, 1998 comedy directed by Brian
Gibson.
The plot revolves around "Strange Fruit", one of the most popular
1970s British rock bands. Like many of those bands, "Strange Fruit"
proved vulnerable to too much sex, alcohol, drugs and band in-
fighting. All that culminated in disastrous festival performance
followed by immediate break-up. Twenty years later Tony Costello
(played by Stephen Rea), one of its original members, doesn't make
much money as condom machine repairman so he accepts the offer to
gather other band members for a comeback tour. Although band's
former secretary and groupie Karen Knowles (played by Juliet
Aubrey) agrees to help him, reunion turns out to be much more
difficult that anyone had imagined. Some band members have
abandoned music career years ago, some are recovering from
substance abuse and some are dead. Costello, with the help of
Hughie (played by Billy Conolly), band's old roadie, nevertheless
manage to convince his old friends to test their abilities on the mini-
tour in Benelux countries.
STILL CRAZY is a film mostly oriented to the older audience - those
who feel sentimental towards good old times yet allow twenty or
more years of experience to put those cherished memories into
proper context. Scriptwriters Dick Clement and Ian Le Fresnais are
poking fun at the once deified world of rock'n'roll music and don't
escape from the realisation that the seemingly legendary past wasn't
that different from prosaic present. But they do it in very tactful
manner and show unmistakable fondness for the film's subject
matter. STILL CRAZY works because characters are more than comic
stereotypes - they are real human beings faced with unpleasant
issues of aging. Excellent British actors -Timothy Spall and Bill Nighy
(who would, in a way, repeat the role of aged rock star in LOVE
ACTUALLY) - contribute to this effect, aided by real life musicians
like Jimmy Nail.
Brian Gibson, who has handled music before in WHAT'S LOVE GOT
TO DO WITH IT directs this film very well and achieves proper
balance between pathos, humour and music numbers. Films like
these, of course, simply can't be made without some cliches. So, film
is given the usual happy ending in the form of triumphant concert.
Before that rather unconvincing saccharine-like plot twist clearly puts
STILL CRAZY in the world of Hollywood fantasy. But, there is
enough fun and rock music references in this film to make STILL
CRAZY appealing both to those who are sentimental towards 1970s
and those who still want to know what was so special about that
period.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
Review written on September 28th 2004
Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax
http://film.purger.com - Filmske recenzije na hrvatskom/Movie Reviews in
Croatian
http://www.ofcs.org - Online Film Critics Society
========== X-RAMR-ID: 38711 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1323661 X-RT-TitleID: 1084162 X-RT-AuthorID: 1307 X-RT-RatingText: 7/10
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews