Reviews

This could have been a great opportunity to tell an important story, and this would have been a good cast to rely upon to tell that story. The story of Chess records and the recording of such groundbreaking and influential artists as Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon, Etta James and others *could* have been entertaining...if the writers and producers hadn't decided to play fast and loose with facts and dates.

As several others have pointed out in reviews here, many important elements aren't historically accurate, and the characters aren't portrayed realistically. This is a shame, considering the actors (apparently) did their own singing, which brought a great deal of realism to their parts. Unfortunately, those "parts" were simply two-dimensional caricatures of their on-stage personas. (The only character who survives such an assassination attempt is Mos Def's Chuck Berry, who is a delight to watch. Then again, Mos Def/Yasiin Bey is usually fun to watch, anyway.)

Once you're about 40 minutes into the movie, it begins to reel from one melodramatic crisis to the next. Most of these don't appear to be historically accurate (or even remotely true at all), which becomes fatiguing after a while. The characters rarely appear to offer any justification for the things they do, especially in the case of Leonard Chess (played by Adrien Brody), who doesn't "pay" any of his recording artists, except for Howlin' Wolf. This isn't explained, but could have helped make his character a bit more believable. (Side note: I'm not sure what Adrien's natural speaking voice and "accent" sound like, but between this film and his relatively recent stint on "Peaky Blinders", it sounds as if he's trying to mimic American gangsters from the 1930s -- and failing.)

Jeffrey Wright, Beyoncé, Adrien Brody, Mos Def, and Gabrielle Union are almost always great in anything they're in, but this film didn't give them much room to work to tell their stories.

And that's a shame, because they had great stories to tell.

This has been available on Amazon Prime for a few weeks now--but I'm not sure why. It's a mish-mash of shots of the band arriving in and riding around London, some concert footage, and Al and Dennis checking out a clothing store. Aside from the poorly edited silent concert footage, all the other footage appears to be of amateur, silent home-movie quality.

Yes, "silent".

None of the audio matches what's on screen. An interview with the band (recorded before they left for the tour) plays under several of the clips. Most of the footage is re-used repeatedly. Only "Good Vibrations" seems to be recorded live, but the audio does not go with what's on-screen at the time. And for some reason, "Barbie" and "What is a Young Girl Made Of" play under concert footage (sometimes twice). Neither song is by "The Beach Boys" per se (and both are from the original recordings and are not "live"), yet all music in this video is credited to "The Beach Boys".

Generic, '60s-sounding instrumentals play under much of this video, including obvious rip-offs of "Last Train to Clarksville" and "Secret Agent Man". These even play under some concert footage.

If the audio had matched the video, this wouldn't have been so aggravating, and might actually have appealed to more than just hard-core Beach Boys fans. As it is, it's frustrating, difficult to follow, and not (as the tag line on Prime promised), "Ideal for all Beach Boys fans and rock music lovers".

The concept was interesting: a documentary about Rock music magazines (and, to a lesser extent, the critics who wrote for them) in their heyday. Unfortunately, it was marred by poor editing, amateur production, sloppy audio, and inconsistent cutaways and effects. The last 3 or 4 minutes of it are difficult to follow, with images popping on and off the screen, conversations edited down to non-sequitur sound bites, and things that seem to have been thrown in because they fit nowhere else. In fact, the last clip is about a musician you probably haven't heard of who saw The Clash and and decided that he wanted to be a musician. Not a Rock critic or anyone associated with Rock music journalism. A musician. And apparently, a Punk musician at that (not that there's anything wrong with Punk). This musician seemed like a nice enough guy, but his story wasn't relevant to the documentary. (Note: I don't consider this a "spoiler" because it wasn't much of an ending.)

Despite billing itself as a doc on "The Golden Age of Rock Music Journalism", almost none of the biggest/most popular/most respected music critics of the time are interviewed, and the British Rock music press gets almost no mention at all. And for some reason, most of the critics in the doc appear to be Punk-Rock fans. (Again, not that there's anything wrong with that.😉) Several minutes of the doc are dedicated to a regionally popular Punk band (you probably haven't heard of) and how a few of these critics loved the band. (And for those who might suggest that the doc's production values are enjoying the same "Punk-Rock" ethos as the music and magazine that the critics seem to enjoy, nice try. Some of the interview clips actually *try* to look nice. But many simply appear to have been recorded by the people who were in them...on their phones.)

If you want to learn about the start of Creem or Crawdaddy magazines, or why almost no one in the "Rock music critic" industry seems to like Rolling Stone or Jann Wenner (which may or may not be warranted), this doc is for you. However, if you want to learn about or revisit the heyday of Rock music mags *in general* and the critics who wrote for them, you'll have to keep searching.

The production is very good, but overall, the speeches and reactions of the cast are a bit melodramatic, considering no one was assiduously taking notes of what the Soviet party leaders and nuclear engineers and scientists said and did in those first, chaotic hours.

Jared Harris, Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgård, and others are quite good (as usual), but *all* the actors speak with British accents (some of which are very strong), yet any pre-recorded messages are in Russian (some without subtitles). This only serves to remind you (for good or ill) that you're not watching a Russian (or even a joint Russian-British) production.

Still, for those of us who "lived through" the uncertainty in the days and weeks after the event, this is an interesting look at what might have happened (for the most part), even though it's sometimes over-played.