User Reviews

Just saw this at the Tribeca Film Festival - yipes.

It felt like the people at MTV wanted to make a film mythologizing the 'live fast, die young' rocker, but without any connection to reality or plausibility. A clichéd piece about the cliché of dying at 27, though really it's not like hundreds, or even dozens, of rock stars died at that age – it's only 5, really – Morrison, Hendrix, Cobain, Joplin, Carpenter. You might as well make a movie about a fictional rock star who dies in a plane, and try to tie it into some larger narrative.

Instead of simply reviewing the plot, which you can read on this page already, here's a PARTIAL list of glaring implausibilities and ridiculous plot occurrences that I worked up over drinks after the movie. By all means, feel free to see it for yourself and email me a few more of your own:

1) At the beginning of the movie, when Eliot needs someone to drive him across the country, he asks a kid in a very small-town grocery store to do it, offering him $10,000 cash (which he pulls out of his shirt pocket). The kid then goes back inside, deliberates over this with his parents for about 10 seconds, and the next scene is the family saying goodbye to him. They let their 16-year old son drive off with a completely drugged out junkie on a cross-country ride for $10,000. They live in the Heartland – surely they've seen America's Most Wanted before, no?

2) The guys pick up a hitchhiker, a 16-year old girl introduced to us in a scene which takes place in a cafeteria, where she sits at the counter and watches a wall-mounted television playing a pseudo-MTV which is showing a tribute to the recently fallen rocker. She mentions to the counter boy how sad it is. In the next scene, she is on the side of the road hitching a ride, and the car that stops has the other guy in the band SHE JUST SAW ON TV sleeping in the back seat. And when she gets in and sees this, she takes it in with complete equanimity. She doesn't mention to the kid driving that she knows who he is, she doesn't SMS any of her friends, and, in fact, she makes no comment regarding the fact that she's aware of the situation she's in until five minutes from the end of the movie, when she says, smugly, "I guess you know the words to this one" as she and Eliot share her headphones and listen to the group's song on her IPod.

3) The boy's militant father (in one of innumerable flashbacks) makes his son shoot his own dog after it gets hit by a car and breaks a leg, because he won't take it to the vet. The other boy has to dig the hole to bury it in while this is happening. Dad makes some comment about 'being a man' and 'killing to live'.

4) The boys, as teenagers, are running away from home to go to LA and 'make it big'and while they are waiting for a ride at the side of the road, Mom pulls up to give them a bag of money she's managed to sneak out of their father's bank account. This is not that implausible. But as they are standing talking with her, another car pulls up and waves them over to give them a ride – a car pulls up to two hitchhikers who are already talking to a driver and asks them if they need another ride. How hitch-friendly is this town?

5) Eliot gets knocked out by a gang of Nazi skinheads while symbolically throwing away his bag of prescription (and non-) narcotics and is then taken in for the night by a haggard homeless man casually toting a rifle. Eliot notices the man has no shoes, so he offers him his own boots, and then spends the rest of the film barefoot, even walking across cities and towns this way.

6) In the subsequent scene, the homeless guy invites Eliot to join his choir, where he goes to 'get spiritualized', but the two of them are 1) the only two white people in the choir and 2) the only two who look homeless, as everyone else is dressed quite decently. Add to this the fact that 3), Eliot's face is still covered in blood from the previous night's attack when he walks into the choir room, and no one in the choir expresses the slightest alarm at this.

7) The band has only one song. It is used at every key, emotive moment in the film. It is so stock that it seems as though it could have been made by computer program, like the 'hitmaker' they purported to have designed in Josie and the Pussycats (which I admit, unashamedly, I kind of liked). It may well have been.

and finally…

8) not an implausibility, but yet another ridiculous inanity: When Eliot goes to Tom's dad's house to visit the old man (Mom died while the boys were in LA), they have a kitchen conversation during which the old man is framed by the camera standing in front of a canvas of the 'Our Father', and Eliot is framed in front of a canvas of Jesus on the opposite wall. Get the message, everyone? We thought you would. (But actually, Eliot's reason for visiting Tom's dad is to give him a note Tom left, which turns out to be a red Post-It which simply says "We are all a**holes" – the fact that Eliot would want to deliver a Post-It, and the fact that he would deliver one as utterly devoid of meaning as this one, counts as an implausibility, I guess).

I was able to see this movie during the Tribeca Film Festival, on May 2 2008.

This is an edited version of my original review, since the original would be too long for this site. Email me if you want to know what's missing.

A little background is necessary for this film to be 100%. But the film can be watched and enjoyed fully without this background. The 27 Club is an urban myth surrounding the deaths of prominent artists whose lives ended at the age of 27 (Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, etc.) So when you are introduced to the main character of this movie, Elliot (played by Joe Anderson - who deserves an entire review of his own for this one), you can now understand the magnitude of what he is dealing with. His best friend is dead. At 27. They are the same age. No pressure, right? Now this plot can be taken into the realm of cheesiness very easily. Poor, poor rock star who loses his best friend and musical partner. He is so sad, and he hires a geeky grocery store clerk (David Emrich) to drive him across the country for $10,000. This geeky guy has no idea who he is driving, yet this guy is pretty famous already - not even taking into consideration that his mug is all over the news as the word about his partner, Tom (James Forgey) spreads as we as fans and viewers and human beings know that news can.

Some perspective, from my point of view. I am 29. So lets think about this for just a moment, I was born in '79, grew up in the 80s, missed all of the "tragic" musicians of the 1970s. I was in high school in the early 1990s. And my binder, complete with clear pockets, was covered in pictures and album covers and writing in Sharpie all honoring one person, essentially. And that person was Kurt Cobain. And Kurt is a member of this elusive 27 Club. I remember absolutely everything about the day and week he died. It was everywhere.

When the the underlying plot of this movie is revealed, that Tom, a 27 year old rock star in a popular band, has died, of his own hand essentially, the "fan" in me wakes up. "Wait a second...oh wow. Here we go again." is literally what went though my brain. And not in a way that made me not want to watch the movie. Because as soon as I thought that, I am given a background - a beautiful background which helps me follow this journey. And I am not just talking about Joe Anderson here, though he helps, with his beautiful blue eyes that instantly take me back to freshman year of high school, staring at Kurt Cobain on my notebook. What I am referring to is the road trip Elliot is taking - to clear his mind, or clog it, or whatever - you are never blatantly told what he is doing or what his ultimate goal is - which does not come across as frustrating, it comes across as a gorgeous landscape of America and of relationships and the complexity of loss in general.

The 27 Club captures grief in raw form, and the indecision that comes with the first few days after a loss. Its a hard to explain emotion, if you haven't experienced a great loss, but if you have, when Elliot struggles with his own mind, body and soul during these few days, you will feel with him any great loss you have experienced. Joe Anderson is just that good.

I could write a book on this film, but I will not bore you with my rambling on and on. I cannot end this without talking about others in the cast though, because Eve Hewson as Stella is wonderful. She is the young girl hitchhiker that is picked up along this road trip. This verges on spoiler, but I will not elaborate further than this - she recognizes Elliot and her mission matches closely with his, but she never lets on until the time is right. And when it is that time, it brought my first tears during this film. There were a few chin-quivering moments, but this moment brought the tears to the surface. James Forgey as Tom, while not a complicated role on screen, is an iconic role. James, when he is on screen as Tom, attracts the viewer. Not just in his looks, but the ease of which he portrays this character. You just believe it, and know you are watching potential greatness just fade away. I look forward to see this actor in other things in the future. And David Emrich, as Three Words, is in his simplicity, the yin to the yang. But again, not in an obvious and over the top way. You like him, you believe him and want him to grow, while surrounded by all of this complexity that he cannot relate to at all.

Director Erica Dunton spoke at a Q&A following the screening I was privileged to see. She spoke very frankly about the plot of this movie, but when asked about the look of the film, I could sense the passion in her voice. And she achieved her passion - the film looks amazing. America looks amazing, which reinforced to me that no matter how great a loss is to you, you are but a small part of something greater and there is no better way to realize that than to experience that greatness. The 27 Club does that beautifully.