Reviews

This was not a fantastic film, per se, but it was fun. Griffin Dunne played Frank Zappa quite well (as is to be expected from the under-rated Mr. Dunne), and the other performances were laudable for camp value, if nothing else. Generally, VH1 makes little effort to make their "true life" stories anything other than cartoonish entertainment, and this film was no exception. The framing story of a shallow lobbyist's quest for work of real value was given very little depth, and I am not sure whether this is a result of poor writing or the performance of Mr. Priestly; I would tend to suppose the problem lay in the writing. The film does favor the musicians against the PMRC (no surprises here, as it debuted on a music network), but great care seems to have been taken not to paint the PMRC as malicious -- the closest to slander comes in the frequent characterization of the PMRC as "bored Washington housewives." An interesting side note: after each commercial, we were treated to a "parental discretion advised" warning because of coarse language.