I strangely liked this movie a lot. No, it's not particularly smart or interesting in any way. You don't really connect with the characters either since you don't spend much time with any of them and there's no real character development.
BUT -- it really brought me back to a time when I and people my age really cared about music, and being in a band, and we built this entire activity up to become something solid and tangible for us to hang the other parts of life, and as an excuse to develop our personalities. I was never in a band myself but it still brought me back. The movie was made in 2019 but really it's a movie about the mid-to-late 2000s. It's not really a teen movie. It's for people who were teens fifteen years ago.
I felt a general, low-key buzz of pleasure throughout this movie. The plot and dialogue are mostly inoffensive, and the people are pretty, and the tunes are perfect in that quintessential 2000s indie rock way -- catchy and good but not really very memorable when divorced from the personal context of your life.
I understand that Dazed and Confused is a better made movie, but what can I say? I didn't grow up in the 1970s.
