Twenty years after their final gig (at an open-air concert), the rock band Strange Fruit are about to reunite. A chance meeting between the son of the concert's promoter and the keyboard player of the band, Tony Costello (Stephen Rea) in Ibiza (where Tony has the concession for supplying condoms to the island) leads Tony to seek out the other members of the band so that they can play at a twenty-year reunion gig .
Tony gets in touch with Karen Knowles (Juliet Aubrey) who used to hang out with the band in the Seventies and was dating the lead guitarist and soul of the band, Brian. Together, they find the drummer Beano (Timothy Spall), the lead singer Ray, (Bill Nighy) and their bassist Les (Jimmy Nail). They are also joined by their old roadie, Hughie (Billy Connolly) who also narrates the film. None of the other band members have prospered since the break-up. Les runs a roofing firm which he hates, Beano works in a nursery (of the horticultural variety) and is on the run from the tax authorities, and Ray is about to sell up his stately home to pay off his debts. None of them need much persuasion to rejoin the band.
Their efforts are dealt a blow when they learn that Brian is dead. This affects Karen most, since she had always loved Brian but had since left him and married someone else. They recruit a new guitarist, a youngster called Luke (Hans Matheson) and set off on a European tour arranged by their record company (Phil Daniels of Quadrophenia fame in a small cameo). However, old feuds re-emerge once the group spend some time on the tour-bus together and threaten to unravel Karen's efforts to re-launch the band.
The writers and producers of Still Crazy (Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais) are well known in the UK for their television work (The Likely Lads, Porridge, Auf Weidershen, Pets) and Still Crazy has the look and feel of a TV sitcom. Indeed, Timothy Spall and Jimmy Nail both starred in Auf Weidershen, Pets, a comedy series about English builders trying to make a living in Germany. However, Clement and Le Frenais are not very successful in attempting to broaden the scope of the film beyond the narrow base of sitcom territory. In fact, as a comedy, Still Crazy is not very funny.
Bill Nighy is great as Ray, the preening and obviously over-the-hill lead singer, driven to drinking herbal tea and tantric chants by his Swedish wife Astrid (Helena Bergström) who hates the rest of the band. (Astrid's portrayal as a straightlaced stern Yoko Ono figure went down like a lead balloon with the Swedish audience with whom I watched this movie). His attempts to 'like, recapture the vibe, man' are hilarious, and he manages to make Ray a poignant and amusing figure rather a merely pathetic one. Like all real rock stars, Ray has no idea how the real world works. He goes to an AA meeting while the band re in Holland, not realising that the meeting (not unreasonably) is conducted in Dutch. When he gets up to speak, he finds that he has been in an OverEaters Anonymous meeting.
Unfortunately, the rest of the band are not so well constructed. Timothy Spall is a talented actor, but his slobbish, braindead Beano is all too predictable. Stephen Rea has already proved that he is not a comic actor (in Angie) and he reaffirms this here. He is just not funny at all. Jimmy Nail has a singing career in real life, though I'm not sure why or how. He seems to subscribe to the Lee Marvin school of singing (any key you like, any time you like). I expected some fun from Billy Connolly who is a superb comedian, but he gets to deliver lines that would never make it to his stand-up act, and for good reason.
The secondary story, of Karen's enduring love for Brian, and Tony's unrequited love for Karen, never really amounts to anything and just slows down the pacing of the movie. The music is not much either, mainly substandard Led Zeppelin 'rawk' and a simply awful piece of doggerel, delivered by Nail, with all the emotional impact of a toilet flushing. In total, Still Crazy is a bit disappointing, but I can't help suspecting Bill Nighy's performance might make Jimmy Page and Mick Jagger squirm just a little bit.
Directed by Brian Gibson.
| ****** Excellent - An outstanding
movie ***** V. Good - Very enjoyable or engrossing **** Good - Entertaining *** Mediocre - Nothing special ** Poor - A waste of time * Terrible - Complete rubbish |
*** |
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