Behind the Music: Hitting All the Wrong Notes in The Perfect Age of Rock 'N' Roll

Details

The Perfect Age of Rock 'N' Roll
Directed by Scott Rosenbaum
Red Hawk Films
Opens August 5, Village East

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More About

• Kevin Zegers
• Jason Ritter
• Amy Winehouse
• The Perfect Age of Rock 'N' Roll
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

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Amy Winehouse's recent death at 27 grants grim topicality to The Perfect Age of Rock 'N' Roll, a hackneyed saga about two musicians of the same legendarily doomed age: floundering frontman Spyder (Kevin Zegers) and his childhood friend Eric (Jason Ritter), whose songs he stole for stardom and whom he attempts to recruit for a new album in an effort to salvage his career. Recounting their 1991 road trip from Long Island to Los Angeles via a framing 2011 interview between Spyder and a reporter (Lukas Haas), Scott Rosenbaum's film (scored to songs by, among others, Nirvana, the Violent Femmes and Jane's Addiction) is 10 tracks of clichés, dutifully trading in drugs, daddy issues, attempted suicide, gunfights, hotel trashings, regret, artistic and romantic jealousy, betrayal, ecstasy, and tragedy. Mascaraed Spyder is the Axl Rose to flannel-scruffy Eric's Eddie Vedder, with the dissonant pair coming off as mismatched stereotypes. The phoniness of their cross-country saga is compounded by a gaggle of cipher sidekicks, including Peter Fonda's old-school music-biz pro, Taryn Manning's sultry band manager, and a tattooed bassist and drummer who are treated like laughable afterthoughts (well ...).