This is a look at the early days of Jimmy Buffett and the original group of musicians who made up the Coral Reefer Band. It's a film that looks at the hard partying early days of the group up until roughly the time that they began to clean up their act and not have the biggest rider for alcohol of any rock band out there.
I am a Parrothead. I have been one for about four decades. I've seen Jimmy Buffett probably close to 30 times. I have a complex relationship with the man, his music and the commodity that he became. It is also one shaped by my local venue, which was my least favorite place to see Buffett since they had a no alcohol on sale policy for years so everyone went in loaded, and was the wrong sort of drunk until close to the end so it just stopped being fun. (I did love to go anywhere but home where that wasn't the case)
I mention this up front because my relationship with all of that deeply affected my feelings for the film.
To be honest this is a film full of great music and (mostly) great stories. It's a film that fills in a lot of details about the early days of the band. I really enjoyed that part of the film.
At the same time, I essentially walked away from the film about a half hour in because I got tired of the endless tales of partying. I did come back, but I just stopped caring. I just didn't care to hear about people getting drunk or stoned, particularly when there aren't enough variations of the story. It's simply and we got drunk and performed and then partied over and over again. Yes, that was what they did, but frankly outside of garbage cans full of cocaine there aren't enough interesting stories here to sustain our interest. No, the getting trashed stories aren't everything, but it's mentioned every couple of minutes.
There are some great stories here wrapped in some really blah ones.
Parrotheads will want to see this, but I don't know how this will play to the unconverted.
No comments:
Post a Comment