It was inevitable for me to see this movie. I play in a rock band myself. We've done concerts for almost no audience and we've done sold-out ones too. Small clubs as well as big festivals. So you could say I've "been there, done that". This being said, I have to make one thing clear: rock musicians come in all shapes and sizes. Not all rock musicians are like the ones portrayed in this movie, but the type of rock chicks in PREY FOR ROCK & ROLL do exist and I even had the pleasure of playing with them. So you could say that this movie is a pretty accurate portrayal of what rock & roll is all about on some levels.
The first part of the movie was a little boring, perhaps. I was thinking "This movie is supposed to be about a rock band's struggle for some recognition, but all we see is stuff about their family and relationships." But the second half is much better, 'cause things start to happen (in their private lives and for the band). So maybe the first half was necessary to make you care about the characters. The over-all acting was pretty good, especially Gina Gershon as the lead singer and Drea de Matteo as the silent bass-player with a nasty drug habit. The music itself was just standard rock & roll, well-played, but nothing special. And yes, Gershon's singing wasn't very good at all but at least it was her voice doing the singing. And let me remind you that a lot of successful rock singers aren't actually good singers. The fact that their music's kinda average makes it believable that they haven't been signed yet. Anyway, to me the problem with Gershon's singing wasn't so much the singing itself, but more the lyrical contents. She sings about stuff a 16-year-old would sing about, not a 40-year-old.
When you see them play (live or at a rehearsal) it's all pretty accurately filmed. You see the drummer hitting the right drums, the bass-player playing the right notes,... except for the guitar-player. Lory Petty should really learn how to play the right chords when acting. And one more thing: a band playing in a rehearsal room never acts the same way as on stage. And if they do, their's a big chance that afterwards they'll laugh about it. The rehearsals looked a bit too serious to me. They didn't even play mistakes while rehearsing. Not once. Oh well, it's a movie, right?
But there are also a lot of things I did like. At one point you see the first phase of a song being written: Jacki trying to find the right words together with the right chords on an acoustic guitar. Afterwards you see and hear the finalized version of the song. Then there's the rape-scene. Actually, we don't get to see the act and the idea alone is horrible enough, but I felt real good about what happened to the rapist afterwards. And at one point you see an enthusiastic teenage girl coming up to our rock chicks, doing the R&R-sign and saying something like "I really love your music, but if it were just a little faster, it might be even more cool". And at the end Jacki writes a fast song about that girl. It's just a little detail, but if you can read between the lines, than you know that Jacky's into R&R for all the right reasons. Doing it for the fans is one of them.
PREY FOR ROCK & ROLL is just an enjoyable movie about being in a rock band. I was thinking about giving it 6 out of 10 stars, but I saw this movie together with a girl and since I consider it to be a chick-flick, more or less, I asked for her opinion. She agreed with me that if you're a 16-year-old, you'll probably think of PREY FOR ROCK & ROLL as THE coolest movie ever. But she isn't a teenager anymore and ended up giving the movie 7 out of 10 stars. So this one's for you, Barbsi.
The first part of the movie was a little boring, perhaps. I was thinking "This movie is supposed to be about a rock band's struggle for some recognition, but all we see is stuff about their family and relationships." But the second half is much better, 'cause things start to happen (in their private lives and for the band). So maybe the first half was necessary to make you care about the characters. The over-all acting was pretty good, especially Gina Gershon as the lead singer and Drea de Matteo as the silent bass-player with a nasty drug habit. The music itself was just standard rock & roll, well-played, but nothing special. And yes, Gershon's singing wasn't very good at all but at least it was her voice doing the singing. And let me remind you that a lot of successful rock singers aren't actually good singers. The fact that their music's kinda average makes it believable that they haven't been signed yet. Anyway, to me the problem with Gershon's singing wasn't so much the singing itself, but more the lyrical contents. She sings about stuff a 16-year-old would sing about, not a 40-year-old.
When you see them play (live or at a rehearsal) it's all pretty accurately filmed. You see the drummer hitting the right drums, the bass-player playing the right notes,... except for the guitar-player. Lory Petty should really learn how to play the right chords when acting. And one more thing: a band playing in a rehearsal room never acts the same way as on stage. And if they do, their's a big chance that afterwards they'll laugh about it. The rehearsals looked a bit too serious to me. They didn't even play mistakes while rehearsing. Not once. Oh well, it's a movie, right?
But there are also a lot of things I did like. At one point you see the first phase of a song being written: Jacki trying to find the right words together with the right chords on an acoustic guitar. Afterwards you see and hear the finalized version of the song. Then there's the rape-scene. Actually, we don't get to see the act and the idea alone is horrible enough, but I felt real good about what happened to the rapist afterwards. And at one point you see an enthusiastic teenage girl coming up to our rock chicks, doing the R&R-sign and saying something like "I really love your music, but if it were just a little faster, it might be even more cool". And at the end Jacki writes a fast song about that girl. It's just a little detail, but if you can read between the lines, than you know that Jacky's into R&R for all the right reasons. Doing it for the fans is one of them.
PREY FOR ROCK & ROLL is just an enjoyable movie about being in a rock band. I was thinking about giving it 6 out of 10 stars, but I saw this movie together with a girl and since I consider it to be a chick-flick, more or less, I asked for her opinion. She agreed with me that if you're a 16-year-old, you'll probably think of PREY FOR ROCK & ROLL as THE coolest movie ever. But she isn't a teenager anymore and ended up giving the movie 7 out of 10 stars. So this one's for you, Barbsi.