It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

It's worth watching if you're a guy who wants to see Bunny Lebowski dressed up as a hot hippie. Otherwise, it is a very inaccurate portrayal of what life is like on tour. Despite the fact the Dead let the producers use one of the best versions of "Brown Eyed Women" available (8/27/72 I believe?), it's a thinly veiled, misinformed, anti-drug tirade that has nothing to do with how things are conducted within the hippie tour community.The story starts off with good intentions, but if the people responsible for this movie had stuck with the real story of a misfit trying to find someplace to fit in, it would have worked. Every kid whose been on tour eventually has to deal with the drug thing, but this movie gets distracted by that impasse, dragging the whole movie into a big authority power trip. Having been on tour many times, I can tell you that the experience of it could fill a movie with wonderful characters, hilarious situations and sacred moments. But someone somewhere decided that a movie like that would be celebrating a lifestyle that Big Brother does not condone.

This is a most ridiculous attempt at drama. A spoiled brat rich kid feels like he got the short end of the silver spoon, and decides that he needs the "freedom" and "sincerity" of a bunch of drug-hungry '90s-era hippies following SOMEone around on Tour. . . the Dead were long gone by the time this was released, so perhaps we mean Phish? Either way, it's crap, and if anyone dressed like the kids in this movie, they'd be dismissed even by pseudo-hippies. Of course it wants you to wait around for a learned-my-lesson change of heart and life, but who really cares if or where these people turn? You'd get more depth from a coloring book. It seems like it was written by a 22-year-old who spent two days doing drugs with some hippies and felt like s/he had a handle on some kind of magical scene that would lure in poor neglected trust fund children. To be perfectly fair, if you happen to be a well-to-do, feeling-sorry-for-yourself teen or pre-teen, you might like this. Especially if you haven't had enough anti-drug messages crammed down your throat, because this is yet another. Although if you're looking for any REAL reasons why you shouldn't do drugs, or any idea of what they are really like, that isn't here at all. It's as fake as the sparkly-bright tie-dyes and Tara Reid's perfect lipgloss-hippiedom.

I was reading all the negative comments and I have to disagree! Around the fire is in my eyes an original film that may be an eye opener for young adults. There is nothing cheesy about it at all. As for the acting, it was very good, especially Devon's role. Although he can act like a geek at times, it's part of his style, I still think he did an excellent job!

Overall, the movie was great! There weren't any bad scenes, boring scenes, or stupid scenes. In my opinion, it was Devon's best movie, sad thing is it wasn't that noticeable. Devon played an excellant Simon, a teen who must choose between the materialistic life his father has chosen for him or to live life freely as it comes. In this movie, you can really see how good of an actor Devon is. While watching the film, it's so good that you don't even notice it's really Devon, you think it's real and Devon is really Simon, and you can see his point of view on things. When Simon is upset, you're upset. When he's really mad, you feel mad and when he's happy, you are happy. All of Devon's emotions in this movie are awesome! I definitly recommend this movie, not just to Devon fans, but to everyone.