Rock 'n' roll high school

>> Almost Famous goes on the road with the band

by MATTHEW HAYS

It's a pleasure to report that Almost Famous survives the anticipation inevitably created by its glut of pre-release hype. The film has made the cover of the Rolling Stone (Get it? Just like the characters in the movie!), and its director/

writer and stars are all being touted as Oscar odds-on favourites.

If you haven't, by some miracle, heard by now, the film is Cameron Crowe's autobiographical ode to an era, the early '70s rock 'n' roll scene. Crowe himself managed, at the wee age of 16, to become a rock writer for Rolling Stone magazine. He interviewed the likes of Led Zeppelin and David Bowie, among many others, and eventually went on to become an editor of the legendary rock rag.

Patrick Fugit is Crowe's onscreen doppelgaenger, filling the role with all the wide-eyed naïveté necessary. He lands a gig with Stone, assigned to go on the road with Stillwater--an effectively drawn fictional band--much to his overprotective mother's horror. (Frances McDormand, as the hyper-maternal figure, sporadically injects the film with hilarious scenes of her worrisome phone calls to Fugit.)

By the second act, Almost Famous starts to feel weighted down by its string of clichés: the semi-tragic groupie (Kate Hudson), the self-centered band dudes, the inevitable squabbles on the way to the top, the drug consumption and so on. But by the third act one realizes that indeed there is, generally, at least some truth to stereotypes and clichés--and that Crowe is shooting them as he saw them. He manages, despite some of the film's feeling of familiarity--to create an amazing sense of realism with this feature.

And he clearly owes a huge debt to his cast, who manage to breath life into roles we have seen before. Hudson competently plays Penny Lane, one of the key groupies whom Fugit falls for. And Billy Crudup, as the band's lead singer, evokes the rock 'n' roll ego with striking precision.

But the standout here is Fugit, who was discovered from obscurity and plucked from his native Utah (!) after sending in an audition tape as part of a nation-wide search for this role. He makes even the most banal of rock-story clichés feel real. He manages to steal the film, even next to various scenery-chewers' bits of bravado. He's Crowe's biggest find. :

Almost Famous opens Friday, Sept. 22