Bandwagon (1996)

reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten


BANDWAGON
 By Harvey Karten, Ph.D.
 Cinepix Film Properties
 Director:  John Schultz
 Writer:  John Schultz
 Cast: Matthew Hennessey, Steve Parlavecchio, Lee Holmes,
Kevin Corrigan

Often to strike it rich at the box office, a movie's just got to have a couple of recognizable names in the cast. If you're doing a film about some young people in Erie, Pennsylvania who form a band that improbably soars to success with a hit record, it doesn't hurt to feature Tom Hanks and Liv Tyler and to make good use of a real beauty like Charlize Theron. By contrast "Bandwagon," written and directed by John Schultz, headlines names that few Americans would recognize, but if you pass it up it's your loss. True, it's a first-time feature for John Schultz, but with a score of original songs by Greg Kendall, "Bandwagon" became one of the brightest hits of the 1996 Sundance Film Festival in Utah and could be called the U.S. counterpart to that lovable Dublin movie "The Commitments." "Bandwagon" takes as its subject a group of working class twenty-somethings in North Carolina. Still, it lacks the social commentary of "The Commitments," which is Alan Parker's loud extravaganza about a rock band from an impoverished North Dublin neighborhood which decide to play soul music. Parker's film is driven by the logic of the band's organizer, who argues, "The Irish are the blacks of Europe...Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland..North Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin." What we could say of "Bandwagon," by way of comparison, is that these southern, working-class whites are the bored and exploited proletarians who need to team up and do something with their lives that does not destroy their souls. Though "Bandwagon" is a road movie, it is filmed entirely in North Carolina, which stands in for Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama as well. When Tony Ridge (Lee Holmes) is fired from his dead-end, lifeless sales job, he commits himself to music as a full-time career. Teaming up with a drummer, Charlie Flagg (Matthew Hennessey), who makes his garage available for practice, the group--which eventually selects the name "Circus Monkey," pulls in a zonked-out druggie guitar player named Wynn (Kevin Corrigan), a fight-provoking bass player, Eric (Steve Parlavecchio), a philosophic, eternally babbling drummer Charlie (Matthew Hennessey) and a zen-like pool player, Linus Tate (Doug MacMillan) as their manager. Buying a beat-up van, they tour a four-state area in the deep South, playing at gigs for sixty bucks a pop, determined to be successful recording artists as they draw increasingly energetic crowds to their concerts. While the movie is filled with engaging songs which are not nearly as loud as those in Alan Parker's 1991 film, the real fun comes from the playing off of this mixed bag of musicians against each other. Their personalities are so distinct and idiosyncratic, it's a wonder they could remain together for a week much less live day and night in their disheveled van. In fact the movie gives us insight not only into the lives led by so many groups of aspiring maestros striving to make it big in the pop music world but as well into the dynamics that have caused so many successful groups to break up, its members going their own ways. Each member is amusing in his own style. Tony (Lee Homes), the leader who is also the group's songwriter, is the shy one who at first practices in a closet and in his initial concert turns his back on the crowd. While many of his songs are about Ann, whom he expects to meet on the road, he insists that he is married to his music and wants to travel only to advance the career of the group. Wynn (Kevin Corrigan), whom regular indie moviegoers remember from "Walking and Talking" and "Trees Lounge," gets mileage from being perpetually spaced out, a guy so claustrophobic that at one point he's ready to give up and get out of the truck in the middle of nowhere. Charlie (Matthew Hennessey), who runs off at the mouth so much that at one point the guys in the van jokingly slap a gag on his mouth, is a stream-of-conscious philosopher who talks about anything and everything that enters his mind. Eric (Steve Parlavecchio), the bass player, is in hock to the local shylock, who, despite his aura of toughness (he burns his body hair to prove it) is simply another one of the charming, southern types represented. In the movie's funniest scene, the group break into the shack belonging to the loan shark and steal his dope as well as the musical instrument and amplifier which Eric surrendered to pay him off. Technical credits are so professional that only an expert could tell that the band are singing pre-recorded music. The narrative, however eccentric, is as believable as the auditions in a movie which, despite its population of characters that seem to come out of a Beth Henley play, should appeal to a cross-section of Americana from twenty-something to seniors and from the most established urbanite to the diehard rustic. Not Rated. Running Time: 99 minutes. (C) 1997 Harvey Karten


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