Still Crazy
In the cheeky tradition of This Is Spinal Tap and The Rutles comes Still Crazy, a movie about the reunion of the (fictional) '70s superstars in Strange Fruit, a banal hard-rock act along the lines of Status Quo. But besides a handful of jokes cribbed from the aforementioned films, there's not much going for this overly dramatic and often dull movie. Down in the dumps or simply insolvent, the members of Strange Fruit (who include Stephen Rea, Timothy Spall, and trusted roadie Billy Connolly) reconvene to reap the rewards of the nostalgia circuit. But much has changed in the years since the band first broke up, and Strange Fruit must struggle to make a comeback. For a while, the movie gets by on its cheap charm, but it falters in its handling of the subject matter: Rather than play the plight of these paunchy, middle-aged has-beens for laughs, it instead mopes into midlife-crisis mode. But depressed rockers make boring subjects, and no matter how many uses of the word "bollocks" the actors manage to demonstrate, the drab Still Crazy just isn't crazy enough to evoke much sympathy for its sub-Spinal Tap protagonists.