Almost Famous: The Bootleg Cut: Blu-ray (2000)

Although Cameron Crowe has been involved with many fine films in his career (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Jerry Maguire, Say Anything), he has never made a better one than Almost Famous. To be fair, a film about a teenage kid who gets to go out on the road with a band and writes a story about them for Rolling Stone is going to greatly appeal to a guy who writes about music for fun but Almost Famous is one of the best movies of the 2000's. This Bootleg cut is about 44 minutes longer than the theatrical version and I wish this blu-ray included both versions -- a lot of the extra footage is very good but unnecessary for either the story or the characters -- but it's certainly better than not having it on the format (not including imports).

While the main plot of the story is simply, "kid gets job as reporter, follows a band on the road, has adventures," Almost Famous works on multiple levels. The film is a great coming of age story, an honest look at romance, a character study and most importantly to me, a celebration of what music -- specifically rock and roll -- can do for people and what it means to truly love it.

The characters are all well written, fully flawed, people brought to life by a great cast. Billy Crudup, Patrick Fugit, Jason Lee and Kate Hudson have never come close to being this good in a movie since and fantastic actors like Francis McDermott and Phillip Seymour Hoffman give their usual terrific performances. The movie is alternatingly funny and touching and always honest. Maybe it's because it's based on Crowe's real life experiences but Almost Famous does what a lot of movie strive for and not many achieve, creating a world that feels real and giving us people that live in it the way people live in real life. It certainly helps to have a love affair with rock and roll but Almost Famous should appeal to everyone else just the same based on these qualities.

The blu-ray (available only at Best Buy) quality is solid but not overly fantastic. Detail is lacking in a lot of spots but the color scheme is strong, grain appears natural and overall it works. The same can be said of the audio track. Aside from the few concert sequences and the music soundtrack, Almost Famous is entirely dialogue based. There are never any issues understanding what the actors are saying and the music sounds great. There's just not a whole lot of sonically impressive stuff to work with here.

While the bootleg cut of Almost Famous is a little superfluous, it's still one of the best movies of the last decade or so. It's also one of the finest movies about rock and roll ever made. I can't recommend this film high enough, even if the blu-ray is not quite up to the standards the movie deserves, it's still a film that should be in every movie (and music) lovers collection.

Ratings:

Movie: 4.5
Blu-ray: 3.5