Still Crazy
The drooping phallic guitar on the poster notwithstanding, Still Crazy ain’t the next Spinal Tap. It’s a feel-good movie, and the good feelings it generates are scattered high points in the competent execution of a well-worn formula. The guys get together, they fight, they nearly fall apart, they realize what they mean to one another, and they come through when it counts to score a huge moral victory in front of the cheering fans. If it sounds familiar, it should–it’s The Blues Brothers, it’s The Bad News Bears, it’s Stripes. Like the commercials say, it’s The Full Monty, right down to the bleary male bonding and scruffy-but-cute male leads. But in The Full Monty, a lovable bunch of regular joes strove to take off their clothes, and their heartwarming triumph was as welcome as it was inevitable. That movie got by on charm and novelty–after all, how many heartwarming movies about regular joe strippers are there?
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A lot fewer than there are bad movies about rock bands, that’s for sure. Spinal Tap ridiculed not just the boneheaded lyrics, the plodding music, the fat asses crammed into tights, and the junior-high squabbling but also the countless humorless documentaries that miraculously managed to overlook those things. But despite a few Spinal Tap-esque gags, it’s painfully obvious that Still Crazy director Brian Gibson (also responsible for the Tina Turner biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It and Poltergeist II) still thinks all that stuff is kinda cool. The members of the improbably named Strange Fruit are lovable old duffers on a mission to prove they can still rock. Shepherded by a doe-eyed former groupie and a cynical roadie from the glory days, they hit the road, and after an extremely brief tour of European shitholes, they manage to resuscitate the old magic at a 20th-anniversary redux of the same outdoor festival where they self-destructed in 1977. Along the way the boys must overcome rusty chops, old grudges, skeptical record execs, and disinterested club kids. And along the way we are asked to root for them on their own terms.
The problem that slowly reveals itself is that Gibson wants us to laugh with the Fruits, not at them. Any real critique of the band or its mission is explicitly off-limits–the loyal roadie actually gets called on the carpet for not being supportive at one point. In the first half of the movie the fellas hear an old Strange Fruit tune wafting across an ancient Stonehenge-esque druid circle and identify it as “Tequila Mockingbird”–a sub-Spinal Tap joke, sure, but at least it indicates a basic awareness of the ridiculousness of 70s rock. But later Gibson tries to move us with a shot of the bassist sitting alone on the bus, strumming an acoustic guitar and singing “The Flame Still Burns,” a ballad so cheesy it was nominated for a Golden Globe. The camera creeps in close to Nail’s stricken face, inviting us to feel his pain. This time the parody is unintentional. Spinal Tap was so uproarious because everyone was in on the joke except the band. Well, now they have company.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Still Crazy film still.
