Well, never thought we'd see a movie depicting the life of John Holmstrom formerly of our own High Times as his creation of the underground DIY zine Punk parallels the rise of CBGB as the live birthplace of the punk rock scene in NYC. This is a subject better suited for a TV miniseries--or a elongated documentary--and its attempts at being stylized beyond the parameters of ordinary film is too derivative of the superior American Splendor, such as the comic-book-panel-come-to-life effect. Like many feature film biopics, it's a little too neat and tidy, trying to cram in all the rich history and characters in less than two hours, though the film is not without its little charms.
Alan Rickman plays CBGB founder Hilly Kristal, who opened a club in NYC's Bowery district with the intent of showcasing bands that played Country, BlueGrass and Blues, which he thought was going to be the next big thing. Little did he know it was going to be something totally different, a stripped-down raw rock that eschewed the (alleged) excessive expansion and bombast of bands like Zeppelin and Floyd. Rickman effectively assumes the character of Kristal as a true artistic soul, not always girded to the necessities of reality, like paying bills. Johnny Galecki from Big Bang Theory wears a shag beard and gets to do his retro thing as Terry Ork, manager of seminal punk band Television, also portrayed on celluloid. CBGB was located in the shithole of NYC and everything in and around the club would go wrong, like Television's Verlaine getting shocked by water leaking down onto his mic--although the actor playing Richard Hell overacted with one too many cheesy sneers. Somewhat arresting was a recreation of the nascent Talking Heads "auditioning" for Kristal, and in the process playing the single best song to emerge from the late '70's CBGB-era--"Psycho Killer", at a time when the Heads lived across from CBGB and were but a power trio.
The feminine side of CBGB gets exposure too, with Blondie and Debbie Harry played by the fetching Malin Akerman as well as the anti-Debby, the godmother of punk, Patti Smith, reading poetry onstage and bringing forth another dimension of punk. Kyle Gallner is woefully miscast as Lou Reed, overweight and conveying none of Reed's cooler-and-deeper-than-thou presence. There isn't a lot of dramatic tension in the film, so some is created via conflicts between Kristal and his daughter who worked at CBGB. Scenes of the various' bands adventures at the club are intercut with Holmstrom and collaborators attempting to intellectualize and express the aesthetics of the burgeoning punk scene. The plot gets a little more focused when Hilly becomes manager of the obnoxious Dead Boys and has to deal with proving they'd be a viable commodity, the antithesis of the punk ethos. Hilly's mom and Joey Ramone provide one of the funnier scenes in the film. But his daughter's "You gotta do this for all the kids out there" speech to her Dad to keep the club going runs false, and the last minute donation of money to save the club makes the movie feel like It's a Wonderful Punk Life. The film concludes with real-life footage of Hilly Kristal onstage with and being praised by the Talking Heads when they were inducted into the R&R HOF in 2002, but that only makes us think this film would have been more dynamic as a documentary or extended cable miniseries that could truly develop these characters as more flesh-and-blood people than diefied icons. OMFUG!
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