Detroit Rock City (1999)

the audience applauded

It is a performances centric movie

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

There are lots of really bad B movies, but this one is definitely not one of them. In fact it's one of the better teen themed movies around. It's made in the late '90s, but the scene seems to be set in the mid '80s, and many of the rock classics from the '80s are used in this movie.Four kids who are big fan of Kiss are treated rather badly by their mother and just about everyone else just because they like Kiss. The story is really good, and so are the casts. Many good looking guys and girls gets into all sorts of unexpected loving relationships in this movie.Kiss' Gene Simmons' wife Shannon Tweed makes appearance as one of the lady at the bar.Pretty good movie that you have to see to appreciate how good it is.

I am not a KISS fan, but I have been to their concert a few years ago and must say that they do a great performance. So I sure can see why four teenagers who actually are fans of the band will go through all of this to get a ticket. The movie was made in 1999 when all the teen comedies like American Pie came out and goes by the same formula of a light, crude, silly comedy. My problem with this movie is that I really dislike the overacting. I don't blame it on the actors themselves, they are just doing what they were told to, but it kills the fun for me. In a lot of scenes I felt bored, most entertainment came towards the end. I really liked how they ended up getting the tickets, the scene where they came up with the idea and are doing it was hilarious. I won't say exactly what happened because I don't want to spoil the fun for the ones who didn't see it yet. Many famous faces in this movie. It is kind of sad to see Edward Furlong nowadays knowing that this was his last decent movie and he became a B action/horror movie actor after. Too bad, he had so much potential and was great in American History X. A part of me wonders if this movie ruined it for him. It was a pleasant surprise to see Melanie Lynskey in it. The soundtrack is really good. Speaking as a metal and rock fan I really liked it at all. When it comes to soundtrack I would give it 10/10. I don't want people to think that the movie is bad based on my rating. 6/10 just means that it isn't very good and lacks in many parts, but it is still above average and provides some entertainment. KISS fans will love it. It will also appeal to the following groups: teens, stoners, fans of 70's rock, fans of silly comedy, but not all of them will remember this movie forever and place on their top list. It will still give them some laughs.

Avant-garde director Adam Rifkin has successfully made a teenage film that shows passion, urgency, and desire all in a believable state. The story of his film Detroit Rock City works because we like these characters even though they are odd and strange outcasts, and because the story's central point of focus, KISS concert tickets, seem to be so easy yet so difficult to obtain. It's a simplistic story made complex because of heavy factors; like age, overprotective moms, and disco Guidos.The four boys are do-it-all Hawk (Furlong), party-boy Lex (Andrews), loudmouth Trip (DeBello), and insecure Jam (Huntington) who love to rock out, work soft, play hard, and smoke marijuana. They have a garage band called "Mystery" that mirrors the band they idolize, KISS. After much trouble they look to have their eardrums blown off at an upcoming KISS concert, but because of Jam's overbearing mother, the tickets are gone and so are their hopes for the best concert ever.Though by sure luck, Trip calls into a radio show, answers the obligatory KISS question, and wins the four boys four tickets and backstage passes to the same concert. So now, they break Jam out of a boarding school his mother placed him in and are now resuming their plans for the best concert ever.Rifkin clearly knows how to have a fun time. He seems to know how it was to be a teenager who loved sex, drugs, rock and roll, and loud music. All the boys start as cookie cutter stereotypes, but it isn't until the final act of the film where they go off on their own that we see the true side of everyone of them.The fatal mistake Detroit Rock City made back when it was released in 1999; it cut off its main audience. Because of its R rating, used to fully utilize the language and drugs true to the youth, certain High Schoolers who I'm sure mirrored the behavior of the individuals portrayed in the film weren't allowed to see it without a parent. But how could you make a PG-13 Detroit Rock City? I just don't see it.This also occupies one of the best film soundtracks I've heard in quite sometime. Yes, lots of KISS songs are played to amuse the fanboys, but songs like "The Boys Are Back in Town," "Highway to Hell," "Iron Man," "Jailbreak," "Rebel Rebel," and more are all snuck in. Detroit Rock City doesn't just stoop to the level of all KISS, all the time. I sneaks in other easily recognizable rock tunes to please both the fans of the band and rock fans in general. No assembly of knowledge on KISS is required to enjoy this film. It's a centrist kind of film.Now if only the ending could've been more. I dare not spoil it, but it feels like something was thrown on the cutting room floor too early. It feels vacant, void, and abrupt. Detroit Rock City is an eventful camaraderie of enjoyable characters and amusing events that please the most persistent and choosy buddy comedy fan.Starring: Eddie Furlong, Giuseppe Andrews, James DeBello, and Sam Huntington. Directed by: Adam Rifkin.

To really like this I need to work at it. The walls of the girls' Jericho did not fall until the third session of filming that particular scene, some things take work. There are also two rather special historic commentaries on my DVD and I assume that proper late 70's rock fans are likely to know of those. This is from a time that was not too good from my view, personal disaster, but there was some good rock and roll on the radio. Buying a few, very few, LPs, USA speak albums?, KISS was there. Not the best but among those that stood out as among the best. The classical music that stood out for me included Carmina Burana and I would have interpreted its influence on me in a different way to how this feature uses that piece, for me I was more waving a red rag at bulls that did not appear to be bulls. There is a lot of violence in this story, but other facets too. Round our way most seemed to use more subtle forms of violence on big babies but this does give some variations of that, sort of. I found it easy to get ground down, those years. Some get trouble from all sides. * The commentaries point to KISS having been targeted by some fundamentalist Christians who considered the band to be agents of the devil, their music something that these fun C felt a need to attack. My difficulty is with how the feature interprets that. The feature shows Catholic mothers and priests as agents of the anti KISS. They are very much in parody form. As an ex Catholic I do find the expression to be not in tune with the wide variety in that church. The bits with priests are mostly too way out for me to be able to take, I need to jump over those. The exception as the bit where Beth notices her love going into the church. Inside the church a problem, despite Beth's acting. There are several features where I would really need a personalised copy and this is one of them. I need deletions. The Catholic mothers, particularly the mum of Jeremiah, a different thing. First time round that felt way too bad but that reaction soon calmed. More viewings also allowed me to notice how her idea of child care appeared to be influenced by ways of dealing with a pet dog. Not a warm sort of way as with Hermione and her Crookshanks, more a Ron with Pig as shown in the novels. Pig expected to do things on a Must Do basis, otherwise no love. This is parody, but it could be noticing something rather relevant in some of the fundamentalist Christian worlds. I find that it is there in other worlds too but maybe one only notices if one is a big baby. I would expect Harry and Ron to not survive well in the modern world and JK Rowling and Warner do have ways of saying that. The ending of HP7 novel is very modern speak. So, some fundamentalists attack and this feature shows a response by the Rockies, them attacking back, but doing that in an upside down way. By going with the flow of trying to sound evil? By these four fans waving goodbye to most any sort of sense? The world moves away from fundamentalist understandings about such as the ten commandments and this shows everyone diving into disease as the alternative way? So, this is just a feature, one that took me some getting used to. It is not about reality in the fullest sense? Could be that in any type of fundamentalist belief there is a failure mode of there being no leeway. Believe, no other option, no freedom to think. If one feels a longing to drop out there can be no good way to do so. Most characters in this story remind me of that sort of thing. There will be different interpretations, though. * This feature has lots of good music on the soundtrack. I play it because of that. Just I do experience a problem with the foreground, most scenes that include priests, and deletions are the only solution that would be liable to work for me. This is a story about the walking dead, KISS as a setting for that.