mflutka-1

Just so everyone knows this is a concert film, not a "documentary" as they seem to be marketing it as.

What a thoroughly pointless excursion in film-making. Saw an "advance screening" on Wednesday in Chicago. A local radio station gave out free passes and the theater was only 1/3 filled but even that dwindled as folks snuck out before the credits (myself included). All I could think is "Isn't there a younger, exciting, more RELEVANT band to put all this money & effort behind?" I had no idea that the shows at the Beacon filmed for the film were a fundraiser for Bill Clinton's charity. You know the tickets were going for $2,000 a head so if you look in the crowd you see one of three types: trust fund babies, music execs/politicos, and middle-aged Stones fanatics. Or as Smithers would say "a healthy mix of the rich and the ignorant".

Now on to the performance: passable but phoned in. Mick's voice sounds terrible and his vocals are way too loud in the mix. Keith Richards and Ron Wood spend the evening looking at their fingers, and Keith forgets the words to multiple songs. Charlie Watts was awesome, though. Mick just looks silly and old prancing around stage and you can see him CLEARLY reading a teleprompter (watch as he looks down and to stage right). They definitely benefit from the stadium/arena experience where you can't notice these things. Buddy Guy shows up and blows them out of the water; showing how growing old and still rocking SHOULD be. Vintage clips sprinkled between the performances remind you that at one time they were cheeky, dynamic and relevant. Those days have passed. And a bunch of days have passed since then.

NOTE: I personally love the old Stones catalog but, seriously, how can they even muster excitement paying "Jumpin' Jack Flash" for the 10,000th time?

Talk about misrepresentation! This movie misses on so many marks that I honestly feel sorry for those involved. The acting, editing, cinematography, "costumes", etc. YIKES! What really got my goat was the thorough incoherence of the "story". The movie's called Poster Boy and the main character bitches and moans about how he's "not the perfect son" but his big problem is giving a single phoney speech! If the movie had been about his parents grooming him to be a politico and forcing various women on him it might've made sense. But when he's a nobody at some second-tier university an they're trying to hide him how is he a Poster Boy living a lie. He mentions on several occasions how he's invisible. Boo Hoo. And what's with the political implausibility? The devil from South Carolina who's in office and running for re-election in New York? I don't think so. Oh, and how about the fact every character smokes constantly in totally inappropriate locales. I suppose this was to make them "interesting". Bleh. Of all the bad acting Izzy has to be the worst. Is she doing an impression of Ally Sheedy in Breakfast Club or what? The two gay characters which were supposedly the selling point of this fiasco have about as much sizzle as a glass of water. All in all, another sad contribution to the canon of horrible gay films. I was bamboozled by another wretched NetFlix suggestion! The end.