Almost A Winner It’S Got A Great Cast That Delivers Some Strong Performances, But Flick About Radical ‘70S ‘Almost Famous’ Is Soft To The Core

Cameron Crowe correctly captures at least one aspect of 1970s California in his semiautobiographical movie “Almost Famous.” Namely, the flight-attendant uniforms.

But more on that later.

“Almost Famous” is based on Crowe’s own life, which by anyone’s standards has been remarkable. Author of the book and screenplay upon which the movie “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” was based, Crowe wrote for Rolling Stone magazine while still in high school, long before he married Heart guitarist Nancy Wilson and began directing films such as “Say Anything” and “Jerry Maguire.”

Aside from a short prologue, which explains the relationship that the dutiful Crowe (Michael Angarano) had with his rebellious older sister (Zooey Deschanel) and their lovingly difficult mother (Frances McDormand), “Almost Famous” centers on Crowe’s initial assignment for Rolling Stone.

In real life, San Diego native Crowe’s first cover story for the rock magazine sent him out on the road at age 16 for a two-week stint with the Allman Brothers. In “Almost Famous,” Crowe — known here as William Miller (Patrick Fugit) — goes out on the road at age 15 with an up-and-coming band called Stillwater.

Initially seen as “the enemy,” rock-band jargon for music journalists, William manages to make friends with the band. He also befriends the young women who comprise the band’s entourage. These women, girls really, are groupies who call themselves “Band Aids” because they prefer to been seen as sweet inspiration instead of the sexual sidelines they really are.

“Almost Famous,” then, is a road trip — both literally, as the band moves between Tempe, Topeka and Cleveland, but also figuratively, as William and the other characters move from states of denial and delusion to relative stages of self-awareness.

For a variety of reasons, “Almost Famous” is bound to be a hit. It’s already drawing reviews that are slavish in their praise, which is only natural. The film boasts not only a cast of burgeoning stars but also offers the kind of nostalgic look at adolescence that tends to play well both at the local metroplex and the resident art house.

And as is true in all his films, Crowe excels at drawing superb performances from his cast. Crudup (pronounced Crew-dup), who plays a Dickie Betts-type guitarist named Russell Hammond, is perfect as the decent guy who hides behind a born manipulator’s easy smile. Fugit has all the naivete, in addition to the sweet baby face, that his character needs and more.

Kate Hudson, though, is movie magic. As the lead “Band Aid,” one who calls herself Penny Lane, Hudson is a spark of pure luminescence who literally emerges from the dark to light up the screen. Good in such other films as “200 Cigarettes” and “Gossip,” Hudson demonstrates here the kind of stuff from which stars are made. Mama Goldie Hawn should be proud.

In supporting roles, McDormand and Philip Seymour Hoffman are most notable. McDormand plays Elaine Miller as a demanding disciplinarian, one who rails against Christmas as a “marketing tool” and whose mantra is “Don’t do drugs.” Yet, no small feat, she never becomes a stereotype.

And neither does Hoffman, one of today’s better character actors. He plays Lester Bangs, the acerbic real-life rock critic whose death in 1982 at age 33 was drug-related, whose passion for rock music was unquenchable and whose graciousness toward younger critics — like Crowe — was profound. It is Hoffman’s Bangs who gives William the best advice that a critic can have: “You should build your reputation on being honest and unmerciful.”

As a filmmaker, Crowe should have listened to his late friend’s advice. Because “Almost Famous” is not only less than honest, it’s about as unmerciful as “The Little Mermaid” is controversial.

This lacking isn’t noticeable at first. Crowe manages to carry us through the film’s first half without stumbling over into the maudlin. Three impressive sequences stand out in particular: One where Russell attends a party filled with “real” people from Topeka; another in which Penny and Russell play out their mutual seduction in plain sight; and one in which the band, following a typical argument, makes up by slowly — one by one — singing Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer.”

Crowe, smoothly using the music of John, The Who, Simon and Garfunkel, Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers and others, manages to walk the narrow line between drama and comedy similar to how a far better filmmaker, Paul Thomas Anderson, did in his masterpiece “Boogie Nights.”

But then in a series of sequences a poorly edited confrontation between William and Penny in a woodsy clearing, a bizarre Quaaludes-overdose rescue and an airplane-in-a-storm crisis Crowe loses it. During this stretch, “Almost Famous” feels like a much longer film that’s been edited down with a curious lack of grace.

The airplane scene is particularly egregious. An ultimately Hollywood way of easily massaging the plotline, it even uses the tired and insulting device of making a clown out of the gay guy.

Crowe rebounds, again mostly because his cast is so dependable to watch with the exception, that is, of one-note Jason Lee, who plays the band’s self-absorbed lead singer. But the feel-good resolution that Crowe opts for merely points out the film’s final failing: It’s just not edgy enough.

This is hardly surprising. Softness lurks at the core of all of Crowe’s films. Sometimes that softness is called for, as when John Cusack mourns the loss of Ione Skye in “Say Anything.” Or when Tom Cruise realizes how Renee Zellweger “completes” him in “Jerry Maguire.”

But softness feels far less appropriate for a film that seeks to capture a time of such radical energy as the early ‘70s.

It was a time when Cameron Crowe and millions of other men (although, curiously, not William Miller) wore their hair shoulder-length. It was a time in which just breathing during a San Diego Sports Arena concert was likely to get you high and no one felt guilty about it.

And it was a time when now-defunct Pacific Southwest Airlines not only painted big smiles under the cockpits of its airliners, but also forced flight attendants to wear scarlet uniforms whose most notable accessory was the matching pink hot pants.

Lester Bangs have mercy, that much Crowe did get right.

This sidebar appeared with the story: “Almost Famous” **-1/2 Locations: River Park Square, Spokane Valley Cinemas Credits: Written and directed by Cameron Crowe, starring Billy Crudup, Kate Hudson, Jason Lee, Patrick Fugit, Frances McDormand, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Noah Taylor, Michael Angarano, Zooey Deschanel, Fairuza Balk, Anna Paquin Running time: 2:02 Rating: R