As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Cameron Crowe‘s “Almost Famous” (2000) this week, Be Reel looks back at other period pieces about fictional bands: “That Thing You Do!” (1996), “Dreamgirls” (2006), and “Rock Star” (2001).
Whether they became cult favorites or lost $50 million, these movies all face down a massive challenge in not only needing to work as music industry fables but also inventing era-appropriate music compelling enough to merit all the fictional success.
To begin with our main event, “Almost Famous” grounds itself in the naivete of a savant teenager (Patrick Fugit) looking to reconcile his hyper-sheltered upbringing with losing himself in the American rock circuit of 1973. Relying on his own experiences as a journalist, Crowe introduces us to Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup), prodigious guitarist for Stillwater, and Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), leader of the self-described Band-Aids who ride along as muses to the music. Twenty years on, it’s still the details that elevate “Almost Famous”—from a self-conscious Lester Bangs soliloquy about Jethro Tull to the optical illusion of Simon & Garfunkel’s eyeballs on the “Bookends” album cover. They are, most assuredly, on pot.
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Next, we rewind a bit to the bubblegum pop of the 1960s with “That Thing You Do!” When a broken arm benches their drummer on the eve of a talent show, The One-ders enlist local beatnik Guy Patterson (Tom Everett Scott) to sit in. Their subsequent rise is meteoric, and Tom Hanks (serving as writer/director) gets to explore both 1960s nostalgia and music at a crossroads with capitalism. Aided by the brilliant title song by Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger (who recently passed from COVID-19), the movie is both charming and inoffensive, relying on the humor of Steve Zahn, the cool of Everett Scott, and the moral ingenue quality of Liv Tyler.
In “Dreamgirls,” based on the successful Broadway musical from the 1980s, three soul singers (prominently lead by Beyoncé and Jennifer Hudson) attempt to break out in a white and male-dominated space. Helmed by business manager Curtis Taylor (Jamie Foxx), “Dreamgirls” focuses on the many trials faced by these performers to achieve mainstream success. Hudson and Eddie Murphy lead an all-star Black cast, but the anti-creativity perspectives and easy cliches of this movie keep it from being a true indictment of how Black artists are treated by white monoculture.
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Finally, Mark Wahlberg plays out the fantasy of joining a successful hair metal band in “Rock Star.” With a clear nod to Judas Priest‘s replacement of their frontman, “Rock Star” is a fairy tale about a Pittsburgh Xerox repairman with an A+ tribute band to British hair metal group Steel Dragon. But once Chris (Wahlberg) joins the band, the sex and drugs immediately seem to overpower the rock ‘n’ roll. With a more notable poster than an actual story, this is a totally silly movie that we’re mostly thankful allowed us to extend this category into the 1980s.
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