Sure when you think of the quintessential music movie it’s easy to rattle off the big ones; “This Is Spinal Tap”, “Tenacious D and the Pick Of Destiny”, “Hard Day’s Night”, “Almost Famous” or, god help you, “Rockstar”. But, beneath the more obvious choices there are plenty of underrated classics.
5) “Singles” (1992)
This story centers on a group of 20-somethings living in an apartment block in Seattle. Think popular sitcom “Friends” onlywith a grunge soundtrack. It gets the extra bonus points for 1) Cliff Poncier (played by Matt Dillion), the douchey musician who just steals the show every time he opens his mouth and 2) his band mates all being real-life members of Pearl Jam; including Eddie Vedder being his self-esteem whipping boy. Also, Alice in Chains swing by as themselves playing a basement show. There’s even a “blink and you’ll miss it” cameo by Chris Cornell. If you recognize half of those names, and own a stitch of flannel, this movie is worth a gander.
4) “24 Hour Party People” (2002)
Steve Coogan plays Tony Wilson, the head of famous Factory Records; the very same label that signed groundbreaking post-punk acts like Joy Division, A Certain Ratio and Happy Mondays. The great thing “24 Hour Party People” does is have a great sense of humor about itself.
If you’re a fan of this genre of music, you already know there’s a level of pretension that’s unfairly associated with its fan base. What “24 Hour Party People” does is take the real events, spice them up with a sprinkle of dramatization and deconstruct the whole scene as having been spawned entirely off the suggestions of a couple of really drunk men.
3) “The Harder They Come” (1972)
The classic story of “The Harder They Come” finds Jimmy Cliff playing an exaggerated version of himself and struggling to find work before becoming a star reggae singer. And that’s where you’d expect the story to end. But Cliff reaches his zenith with still another 40+ minutes of movie to go. That’s when you realize the rest of the movie is actually about how Cliff became a marijuana runner, fighting off hordes of rival gang members while maintaining his music career. It answers the question “what if Walter White from Breaking Bad had a part time job as a lounge singer?” years before anyone thought to ask it.
Throughout the movie Cliff is basically a mishmash of Han Solo, Shaft, and Jimmy Cliff (which in itself is a full time job).
The fact that this soundtrack may have single handily broke open the US markets to other young reggae artists (like Bob Marley for instance) is just the icing on the cake.
2) “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” & “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey” (1989/1991)
While there’s no doubt in my mind that Bill & Ted is anything but underrated, I’d feel like it’s an easy one to skip over in terms of a music movie. Bill and Ted, you see, aren’t just destined to be the best rock band in the world. They’re destined to unite the world and bring about peace by the sheer brilliance of their hard rocking (demonstrated throughout the course of two movies by them playing really shitty covers).
I’m putting both movies in because, while Excellent Adventure is the better movie, Bogus Journey had the better soundtrack and featured Steve Vai shredding all over the damn place.
1) “Wild Zero “(1999)
What happens if you took the film “Kiss Meets The Phantom Of The Park”, made it not suck, made the band anyone else but Kiss, had that new band give a damn and then crossed their adventure over with a forgotten George Romero script? You’d have the single greatest music classic of all time, “Wild Zero”. It stars the Japanese garage rock band Guitar Wolf. Its members are in order: Guitar Wolf (the dynamic leader), Bass Wolf (the charming, if occasionally violent, stoner) and Drum Wolf (the endearing team heart). When aliens arrive to earth and raise the dead, aspiring musician Ace knows the only smart thing to do is to turn to his idols, Guitar Wolf (self proclaimed the coolest band in the world) and hope they happen to be as good at killing alien zombies as they are at being awesome.
SPOILER ALERT: They are! Armed to the teeth with exploding motorcycles, laser guided musical instruments and enough guns to put 50 Cent’s crew to shame, Guitar Wolf spends the movie’s entire 98 minute run-time being awesome.
So, just how Rock n’ Roll is this movie? The fact that the band takes the time and energy to enthusiastically shout “Rock n’ Roll!” in broken English throughout the course of this movie every time someone so much as sneezes puts it somewhere between “very” and “ridiculously so.”
