Barnes & Noble

One of 2000’s most pleasant cinematic surprises, Almost Famous celebrates the liberating influence of rock 'n' roll on America’s youth during the 1970s, and is in turns both exhilarating and elegiac. Writer-director Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire), drawing on his own adolescent experiences, creates a believable alter ego in Patrick Fugit, cast as a talented teen journalist assigned by Rolling Stone magazine to accompany an up-and-coming band on a nationwide tour. Flush with ambition, the shy youth dutifully chronicles the band’s activities and its members' peccadilloes, in the process learning valuable and occasionally painful lessons about fame, friendship, and love. Billy Crudup is letter-perfect as the band’s charismatic guitarist, whose increasing popularity threatens insecure lead singer Jason Lee. Frances McDormand sparkles in her relatively brief appearances as Fugit’s protective mother. But Kate Hudson's performance -- justifiably recognized with an Academy Award nomination -- is the movie's most luminous, as she portrays the vulnerable, if free-spirited, groupie who steals Fugit’s heart. Evocative of its period but timeless in its appeal, Almost Famous recognizes rock’s contribution to American pop culture with warmth, humor, and the yearning for a bygone era filled with promise. Ed Hulse

All Movie Guide

Writer and director Cameron Crowe's experiences as a teenage rock journalist -- he was a regular contributor to Rolling Stone while still in high school -- inspired this coming-of-age story about a 15-year-old boy hitting the road with an up-and-coming rock band in the early 1970s. Elaine Miller (Frances McDormand) is a bright, loving, but strict single parent whose distrust of rock music and fears about drug use have helped to drive a wedge between herself and her two children, Anita (Zooey Deschanel) and William (Patrick Fugit). Anita rebels by dropping out of school and becoming a stewardess, but William makes something of his love of rock & roll by writing album reviews for a local underground newspaper. William's work attracts the attention of Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman), editor of renegade rock magazine Creem, who takes William under his wing and gives him his first professional writing assignment -- covering a Black Sabbath concert. While William is unable to score an interview with the headliners, the opening act, Stillwater, are more than happy to chat with a reporter, even if he's still too young to drive, and William's piece on the group in Creem gains him a new admirer in Ben Fong-Torres (Terry Chen), an editor at Rolling Stone. Torres offers William an assignment for a 3,000-word cover story on Stillwater, and over the objections of his mother (whose parting words are "Don't use drugs!"), and after some stern advice from Bangs (who says under no circumstances should he become friends with a band he's covering), Williams joins Stillwater on tour, where he becomes friendly with guitarist Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup) and singer Jeff Bebe (Jason Lee). William also becomes enamored of Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), a groupie traveling with the band who is no older than William, but is deeply involved with Russell. Lester Bangs and Ben Fong-Torres, incidentally, were real-life rock writers Crowe worked with closely during his days as a journalist. Almost Famous' original score was composed by Nancy Wilson of Heart (who is also Crowe's wife).

Mark Deming

New York Times

As a director [Crowe] has an extraordinary gift for drawing out rounded, complex performances even in supporting roles and for indicating the fine emotional shadings in the relationships among his characters. A.O. Scott

Boston Globe

Hollywood filmmaking at its best, brimming over with feeling, texture, spirit, and several kinds of keenness that transmute experience into big pop myth. Jay Carr

Product Details

• UPC: 667068781823
• Source: DREAMWORKS VIDEO
• Region Code: 1
• Aspect Ratio: Theatre Wide-Screen (1.85.1)
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Sound: Dolby Digital, stereo
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English
• Time: 2:03:00
• Sales Rank: 542

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