Filmed in 1995, released to a few theaters in 1997, and only now made available on home video, writer-director John Schultz's Bandwagon tells the story of a group of college-town misfits (including future independent-film semi-icon Kevin Corrigan) who team up to form a band, only to find themselves forced to deal with the pressures and anxiety of life on the road. Filmed on location in Raleigh, North Carolina, Bandwagon begins as a modest, engaging slice-of-small-town-life comedy-drama. But it loses focus about an hour in, and is forced to resort to a series of sadly familiar rock-movie clichés, including the comic rival band, the tempestuous vixen who pits group member against group member, the big rock 'n' roll show and tour, and the evil record company that wishes to make the band a Faustian bargain it can't refuse. Predictably, much of Bandwagon's charm comes not from its weak script or uneven acting, but from its obvious fondness for the college-town scene it chronicles. Unfortunately, however, in his bid to give Bandwagon a coherent structure, Schultz has inserted a number of questionable subplots that undermine the authenticity of the unnecessarily melodramatic plot. For example, the record company that wishes to lure our heroes into signing an unfair contract also apparently wants to transform its earnest indie-rockers into a glammed-up hair-metal band. This plot point might have made sense had the movie been set in 1989, but it's difficult to imagine any sane music label actively seeking out a hair-metal band in the mid-'90s (not that a few didn't). Bandwagon has its modest charms—its score, in particular, is quite strong—but the film's uneven tone and disappointingly conventional narrative keep it from being the sharp little sleeper it so clearly wants to be.