Garage Days

Being engaged to an Aussie may jade my opinion of this movie, since I have been exposed to some of the little inside jokes and such over the past few years. However, any movie that keeps you talking about it and wanting your friends to see it so that you can chat about your favorite scenes is a movie worth watching.

Yes, it is an old plot, but aren't they ALL?!?! Boy meets girl...boy can't have girl (Groundhog Day fell into this one in one aspect). The underdog(s) fighting all hope to live the dream (a la 8 Mile). We've learned to accept that there are a few plots that work, yet it is the nuances that happen to make them unique. This little movie has some great nuances, so forget the similarities and enjoy the uniquities. Grab a bag of chips and enjoy the ride.

By the way, without spoiling anything, anyone out there who loved seeing the Stanford Tree mascot and the Cal Bear mascot throwing punches during a basketball game will howl out loud at one small scene. I know that I did.

Well, I got mixed feelings about this movie after I saw it. The story is not really bad... and it tries to show what Rock And Roll is about... dreams! But the band image...... I think it happened as many other Rock And Roll movies. The band doesn't look real, it looked as a fake, hand-made band. There's no authenticity in the band. They look like some kinda punk-garage band (specially the bass girl), but the song they're playing at the end sounds as an 80's power ballad or so. The guy doing drums looked more like a techno-whatever D.J. And the other band, the one that it's supposed to be the successful band, is called "Sprimp"... what kinda name is that, for Christ sake?

I don't need to say that i only rented the movie because i saw Alex Proyas name on it. Ofcourse i had read some reviews and seen some pretty slick pics on the net, so i knew what i was getting into. Although i was quite sure that it was a hot potato i expected some style from Proyas, some darkness despite the original premise. What i got wasn't from what i expected, style-wise. Quality-wise though...

The movie started off, more or less like "Snatch" or "Lock Stock..." choose your preference, anyways, quick cuts, some rather silly jokes, freeze frames et la. I though of just stopping the flick and go see a real movie on the nearby theatre. But naw, i just could not, i 've never done that, so why now? I MEAN it didn't suck THAT MUCH. This had all the trademarks of an Alex Proyas movie, i mean it ain't no "Planet of the Apes"(in this one you can tell who directed it), the rock music is here, as a matter of fact The CURE are here as well, the stylish dark kind of MTV shots are here, slow motion clear and present, a pinch darkness? Here as well. But despite having all these elements, i just couldn't stop wondering, what attracted Proyas to the project, it's fairly average if not total garbage of a script. Although not cliched, it has its fair share of wickedness, some funny moments, some chilling moments and some slapstick, but overall it is a mess. What it needed was wit but It lacked wit, it could have worked if there were some Woody Allen or Kevin Smith one-liners--their movies lack srtucture too anyway!--. The music now: as i said it's quite cool, not The Crow kind of cool but still it was a pretty nice little collection of songs, these were used nicely through out the movie, sometimes effectively, most of the times just to provoke feelings that the actors are unable to communicate.

What made the movie worthwhile though, was the fact that it had a few set-pieces which were cool, like a certain bloody bath tub or that slow-mo(bullet time you say?) rain, which looked obviously phony but still that is what makes them attractive. Acting is fairly average, Haley Joel Osment could act the feminine parts better than these gals...not to mention the guys parts the governor of California could kick some serious acting but here! The cinematography is moody at times, there are some new hotties coming out of this flick(no not that leading lady! But surely the other two ladies are certainly going to Hollywood...although they shouldn't really act..if you know what i mean)but other than that... A Final notice i hope I, ROBOT is a return to form, cause this gives Alex a bad name. I mean man! Get a hold of yourself! You've seen it before, it's tv-movie quality, it wanted to be ALMOST FAMOUS--but it's just shite.

4/10 Choose life, Choose another movie...

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie sucks on ice.

The "characters" are either overblown clichés (death-obsessed goth girl? Check. Drugged-out drummer with mod haircut? Check check. Ubiquitous use of eyeliner? Check check check!) or ridiculously annoying people who you'd never spend six seconds with in real life.

Script-wise, this is a soggy mess. There are three people credited with the story, which makes sense as there are at least three movies stitched together. My guess is that Dave Warner wrote a comedy, Alex Proyas penned a tragedy, and Michael Udesky scribbled in a notebook while tripping on liquid acid. Then each of them tore out every fourth page of his script, threw the remaining pages up in the air, and stapled the resulting mess together.

The, um, cinematography is aggravating. Tarantino is not hip, MTV is not edgy and that disjointed text-on-screen technique went out of vogue around the 1890's. As for the trip/rave/ingestion scenes, they're as effective as PSAs: Don't do drugs! Why? They're boring as all get-out.

Overall this is a sickeningly inauthentic movie. The acting is laughable, the comedy is unfunny, the pathos makes you hate these people even more than you previously did. All the tattoos look like they were drawn on with Magic Marker. And the band's total playing time is less than two minutes. 90 seconds of that is a fantasy scene.

The ONLY reason to acknowledge the existence of this celluloid horror is its soundtrack. Featuring the Jam, the Femmes, the Cure, Roxy Music and Tom Jones - that's entertainment. Just buy the record and skip this movie entirely.

This movie is just plain fun that takes a pretty average, well-known look at the music industry and the hike that bands take to get to where they want to be. But Alex Proyas adds some CGI effects (pretty funny ones, I might add...like Mellie the "baby") to make up where this average movie was headed. ALl of the actors are pretty unknown in the States (where I am), but it all doesn't matter because they were all vivacious enough (and good-looking enough) to make you believe that they encountered this past themselves.

This movie tries to take you on an emotional roller-coaster of relationships between band members and their girl/boyfriends, but where that comes up short, the movie just throws more fun at you. My favorite parts are the melon-baby and the hallucination scene where the band's bassist tries to get money from her parents and finds herself tripping out. I hated the where-are-they-now ending and cutesy-poo looks back on life and love and careers and whatever else, but the movie as a whole was OK. I gave it a 6/10.