E-mail
Print
(R). A kinetic, appealingly overdone comedy from Australia about an aspiring rock band's beleaguered trudge to the big time. As long on tiresome romantic complications as it is on vivifying pop graphics, but the actors are engaging and it wisely leaves the question of its characters' actual talents open-ended until the final count. The closing-credit curtain call is charming. Directed by Alex Proyas 1:45 (nudity, sexuality, drug use). At AMC Empire and the Sunshine Cinemas in Manhattan.Every generation has its hit parade of rock- and-roll wish-fulfillment movies. "Garage Days," an oh-so-Australian picture that works hard - and often succeeds - in owning the title for 2003, is steeped in a half- century of teen genre films that reach back to "Jailhouse Rock." If you're alert, you can even spot a character dashing past a revival-house showing of "Bye Bye Birdie," which itself was only a year away (it's stunning to consider) from "A Hard Day's Night."
The imprint of that classic Richard Lester showcase for the Beatles can be found all over Alex Proyas' "Garage Days," a flamboyant comedy of rock- and-roll dreams that splashes the screen with wacky visual riffs like a kindergartner attacking his first jar of fingerpaint. A design-conscious director known for his grim, grunge-rock palette ("The Crow" and "Dark City"), Proyas lightens both the narrative and compositional tones for this footloose tale of a fledgling Sydney rock band struggling to get its foot in the door.
It hardly helps that the band's manager Bruno (Russell Dykstra), a brash, unvarnished lummox who clings to the glory days of Tom Jones, doesn't know where to find the door, let alone how to open it. That job is left to the band's winsome but willful lead singer Freddy (Kick Gurry), who divides his energies between trying to woo a self-absorbed superstar manager (Marton Csokas, an Oz actor who suddenly seems to be everywhere) and win the lead guitarist's girlfriend Kate (the radiant Maya Stange) away from her cheating boyfriend.
Freddy's wandering attentions inflame his ex- girlfriend Tanya (Pia Miranda), who also happens to be the band's bass guitarist. A spunky aficionado of S&M sex, Tanya responds to Freddy's rejection by hitting on their drug-fiend drummer Lucius, aka Lucy (Chris Sadrinna). The most compelling of the band's characters by far is its least demonstrative, the amorous lead guitarist Joe (Brett Stiller), who sinks deeper into a schizoid dementia with every scene.
It's hard to get fired up by the group's internecine round-robin of relationships, which take a back seat to a starburst-shower of visual wisecracks: cartoon graphics, rapid-fire montages, faux home movies and overlapping images. The trippiest of these sequences is also its most derivative, a communal freak-out on liquid Ecstasy that owes much to Danny Boyle's psychedelic reveries in "Trainspotting."
Despite the influences from vanguard British filmmakers, "Garage Days" is quintessentially Australian in its seesaw jumps from the harsh to the sentimental, from broad humor to sly. For all its libidinous, chemically suggestive bombast, it's essentially a sweet-natured, modestly likable little film. Like "Woodstock," a movie whose rock-and-roll dreams have long come and gone, it's so assertively of-the- moment that you can feel the film dating itself with the flicker of every frame.
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Mixx