Barnes & Noble

John Cameron Mitchell's thundering, intelligent psycho-comic essay on the creation and deconstruction of a pop persona is the best transvestite rock opera this side of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Based on Mitchell and Stephen Trask's Off-Broadway musical, the film is a reminiscence of the familial and sexual trauma that drove a young German boy to a sex-change operation gone horribly, hilariously wrong. As an adult American divorcée, Hedwig hits the road with her band, chasing down her rock-god ex-boyfriend from one town to the next. The ex plays the stadiums; Hedwig and her band play the dumps. On film, the songs -- vivid refractions of Roxy Music and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, among others, composed by Stephen Trask -- still work overtime to carry the story engine. Mitchell constructs plush visual interiors to illustrate the tunes, with help from dreamy, semi-connected animated interludes by Emily Hubley. Ultimately, Hedwig, with its keen, flashback-fueled grace, could be termed the rock flick's Citizen Kane -- and that's an overstatement you can flick your Bic to.

All Movie Guide

Adapted from the hit off-Broadway musical of the same name is this tale of an "internationally ignored" rock & roll singer who hails from Communist Berlin and who dreams of becoming an American sensation. Hedwig (John Cameron Mitchell), born a boy named Hansel, is raised by a single mother (Alberta Watson) who wishes to see her son do better than his poverty-stricken family. Some years later, Hansel is attracted to a good-looking American G.I, who promises a better life overseas for young Hansel, under one condition: that he undergo a sex-change operation to become a fully functional female who he can then marry. The operation is seriously botched, leaving the now-renamed Hedwig with an "angry inch" only to be stranded in a dingy Kansas trailer park on the day the Berlin Wall comes tumbling down. Hedwig then supports herself through a series of ill-fated lounge gigs and side jobs, meeting up with 16-year old Tommy Gnosis (Michael Pitt), a religious type who befriends her and later steals her songs and becomes the rock star Hedwig always dreamed of being. Undeterred, Hedwig continues to perform in the shadow of Tommy's sold-out stadium tour, attempting to make herself whole in spirit, if not physically. The film features several songs by composer Stephen Trask, who also appears as a member of Hedwig's disinterested rock band; Miriam Shor portrays Hedwig's newfound love and back-up singer. Jason Clark

New York Times

Mr. Mitchell also sings in a voice whose lofty elocution and frosty, slightly inhuman tone echo Mr. Bowie's as spiked with a tiny whiff of helium. Fleshing out the story is a meaty rock score by Stephen Trask whose reaching-for-the-heavens anthems brilliantly parody Mr. Bowie's songwriting in the Ziggy Stardust era without lapsing into caricature. More than simply telling Hedwig's story, the songs, like Mr. Bowie's early-70's output, sketch an overarching pop philosophy whose conceptual grandiosity harks back to the days when stentorian proclamations about rock 'n' roll saving the world still had some currency.... If the glam-rock era is long gone, "Hedwig" reminds us, its subversive spirit, which has percolated under the surface of rock culture for more than two decades, lives on. Stephen Holden

Los Angeles Times

On the screen, the rip-roaring rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch retains all the excitement and energy it had on stage while adding depth, clarity and emotional texture. The result is a movie that absorbs its theatricality so smoothly and imaginatively that it never feels merely like a stage adaptation... Strutting through the movie in a dazzling assortment of wigs, and baring gams whose sleek, tapering curves rival those of Marlene Dietrich and Tina Turner, Mr. Mitchell is as imperiously charismatic on the screen as he was on the stage.... His embittered but plucky title character, who makes her way from East Berlin to Kansas and subsequently across America on a no-budget rock tour of tacky seafood restaurants, often suggests Mr. Bowie as a chilly German dominatrix. Kevin Thomas

Product Details

• UPC: 794043540127
• Source: NEW LINE HOME VIDEO
• Region Code: 1
• Aspect Ratio: Theatre Wide-Screen (1.85.1)
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Sound: Dolby Digital, stereo
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English
• Time: 1:31:00
• Sales Rank: 13,208

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