Perfectly adorable

One of my all time favorites.

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

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

This is a movie about a band that DOESN'T make it. The movie starts around the assassination of JFK. Douglas (John Magaro) is a shy nerdy high school kid from New Jersey. He joins a neighborhood band to play the drums. With the encouragement of hot girl Grace (Bella Heathcote), he becomes the lead singer. He clashes with his father (James Gandolfini). The band members clash with each other as they keep trying to make it.This is written and directed by David Chase which would explain how the movie got such a talent as Gandolfini playing the dad. And it's great to see him although he does overpower everybody in the movie. John Magaro has a good interesting look to him. But he doesn't have the screen presence to compete against Gandolfini.The movie invokes all the historic touchstones of the era. It will give the people of that era a nostalgia overload. At times, it feels like a history test review. It gets a lot of the music of the era. It's impressive considering the probable costs.As for the story, it gets very meandering. There isn't anything particularly original, but Gandolfini is able to elevate the material when he's on screen. John Magaro does struggle to maintain the attention that's require of a lead. Bella Heathcote gives a cold detached performance with her hot model looks. Although she handles her one big scene relatively well.As for the ending, there is a more natural ending to this movie 15 minutes earlier. I would prefer the movie ended there. The actual ending added very little, and the surrealism at the end doesn't fit the rest of the movie. Overall, the movie has some good moments, but it's too uneven.

Boy what huge disappointment this movie was, especially since the recent news of James Gandolfini passing. What a shame that this miserable movie is his swan song. Don't get wrong, James Gandolfini is excellent in this movie, he is definitely one of the bright spots in what I view as a very dim movie.David Chase wrote, directed, and produced this waste of time. David Chase is the creator and writer of the HBO hit series "The Sopranos". I'm not sure what David Chase was thinking or smoking when he came up with this fine piece of rubbish, but whatever creditability he had built up should hopefully now be completely behind him, as he has proved to be a one trick pony in my book.There are many many problems with this movie, but the main mistakes are there is absolutely no story here. Could there have been a story? Yes, but trust me when I say in this instance there is none. Second, there is no character development. You won't give a darn about anyone in this movie, so combined with no story and no viewer connection to the characters this is a disaster.The good news is the musical soundtrack is excellent, especially if you like the great 60's rock hits. The acting by everyone concerned is decent, once again James Gandolfini is excellent but at the same time a clone of his role on the Sopranos, which tends to make me think David Chase has him type cast.So here's the take-away....no story, no character development, no connection for the viewers, no good!!

The recent film Not Fade Away, is both the biography of David Chase, the film director who created the Sopranos and, in its way, a biography of the Rolling Stones' music and the American Black Blues and Race tunes that influenced the group in the first place, before they were distracted into becoming the bad boy alternative band to the cozy, family-friendly, mop top Beatles, writing their own songs instead of covering old black blues songs as they had originally intended to do. The first Stones record "Come On", a cover of an old Chuck Berry tune, was released 50 years ago last Friday (6-7-63) in the UK only. ABC News somehow gave the impression last week that the first Stones song was Not Fade Away, a Buddy Holly B-Side, that became the ironic title of Chase's biopic about his transformation from a talented Jersey Stones Wannabe band member to creator and director of TV's the Sopranos. The opening scene of the movie Not Fade Away features a black and white meeting between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on a train bound for London in 1962. The two young men had lived in the same provincial town and gone to the same school earlier, until Jagger moved away. Within two years this chance meeting had evolved into the Rolling Stones under the management of a kid so young, he had to have his mother sign the band's contracts. I had listened to Keith Richards' biography "Life" (2010) which had explored the evolution of the Stones and their music, and, as I watched Not Fade Away, I realized Chase's movie was recasting what Richards had written about the Stones' music, into his own biography about his late high school entry into being a member of a band on the Jersey Shore. Chase's Jersey band plays 'wannabe' music so well, you ask yourself why they didn't rocket instantly to the top. The first time you see Chase's band performing, they're doing a version of the Chantays' Pipeline so expertly, they might just as well BE THE CHANTAYS! The musical part of Not Fade Away is extraordinary. The overlay of Stones music and Stones biography is a major part of Chase's film. But the screenplay, about a fledgling rock n' roll band and Chase's horrific parents, who are both monstrous and funny at the same time, is the best screenplay I've seen since Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven. There isn't a wrong word or phrase in it. Chase would segue between the Jersey Band's Not Fade Away and its drum rhythm back beat lifted entirely by Buddy Holly first and the Stones later, from Bo Diddley's signature song Bo Diddley, showing original black and white Dick Clark footage of Diddley performing it. Periodically, the action would move to Chase's family kitchen where the major showdowns between Chase and his father (James Ghandolfini) take place. Usually, Chase's very rational younger sister defends her brother, while castigating Pop for calling black people 'niggers' and gay people 'fags.' The mother, always ironing while wearing a plastic hair net over her curlers and a terrible light blue housecoat, would not interfere except to occasionally shriek about nightmares she had, like the one with a black man trying to break into the house at night. The movie is reminiscent of the 'kitchen sink' social realism plays in England written by John Osborne, Terence Rattigan and, later, Harold Pinter, beginning in the 50s. Noel Coward and others had ragged and mocked the lower classes in plays up until then, never giving a voice to the lower classes in Britain until the Labor Party began its long tenure in England after the war. Chase gets involved with the daughter of a Manhattan Ad Agency Account executive, the same fascinating dolt who played Louise's hapless, idiotic husband back home in 1992's Thelma and Louise. Like the sister of the Chase character, she and her sister provide another story of children revolting from the teachings of their idiotic 'greatest generation' parents. The girlfriend, who gives a wonderful performance, attacks her father and his six car garage, when he puts her sister in the nut house for voicing some radical then, tame now, thoughts about politics during the mad house sixties. Dad one ups her somehow in a discussion that begins with him defending Buick's 'Pitch Dynaflow' automatic transmission of then current TV advertising, by coming back with something like this: "Well, if that's the way you see it,that's fine, MRS. ALLAN GINSBERG!" Chase's biopic, is a mix of comedy and drama at the same time. They call it Dramady. If you haven't seen this one yet, you'd better.

David Chase's "Not Fade Away" looks at what it was like to come of age in the '60s. The main focus is a New Jersey teenager who decides to join a band, but there are clear signs of everything that was going on: the Vietnam War, the generation gap, racial tensions, and Dean Martin's mean-spirited comment about the Beatles. Contrary to the previous reviewer, I would say that this movie is better than "Almost Famous". The latter was too fluffy and came across as a sanitized look at its era. This one is very upfront about what sorts of things happened (including some very tense scenes). And the final line poses a good question about how we as Americans want to be known to the world. Can we eventually look to our best qualities to do what's right? Anyway, this is a good movie. It's got great music and brings up some important points. I recommend it.