Stardust

If I was giving the keys to direct a semi-true story about how David Bowie found his footing in the music world, I would never have taken this approach. What a buzz kills. You know you are going to get a slew of rabid Bowie fans to watch this; why make it look like Bowie is a stupid quack. I can't imagine much of this story is based on true events. Perhaps he had some struggles getting his music footing so don't spend 90% of the movie on that and leave your audience not excited about Bowie's rise to Fame; pun intended! There wasn't even any music or early tracks to hear even if they weren't big hits. This did try to paint a picture about Bowie's humble beginnings and how hard it was to reach stardom in America. And how he struggling to find himself in real life and trying to find who he truly is as an artist. It focused on his relationship with a publicist who believed that Bowie could be big in America. All solid points to build into a story. But the main problems were these: Zero character arc.

Zero enjoyment.

Zero Bowie music.

Zero new insights learned.

Who would choose to tell this story with a miniscule payoff or leave the fans excited to play some Bowie on the drive home?

The director and producer (rarely do I call out the producer) managed to make David Bowie uninteresting, flat and devoid of magic. I tinkled in a few rating points for cinematography, lighting and acting.

How can you have a David Bowie Biopic, and not have any of his music in the film?

There are many thing wrong with this film. The most obvious one being the failure of the producers to secure the rights to Bowie's music for a film about Bowie's music. The second issue is that the story is in accurate. The film implies that until Bowie invented Ziggy he was a failure in the US until the Spiders from Mars album was out. This is false. Before Ziggy and after TMWSTW Bowie released an album called Hunky Dory which had a US hit called Changes, an FM staple called Life on Mars, and a song that changed rock and roll, called Queen B*tch. The riff of Queen B*tch is maybe the most copied riff since Chuck Berry, especially by punk and new wave bands. So the fact that this film pretends this album never existed to serve some made up story is dishonest

Third mistake is having a 60 year old Marc Marin playing a 39 years old is very distracting.

It is sad when the most intriguing parts of a film are the vintage cars and hotel carpeting.

It's a shame the makers of this film ever invoked the name of David Bowie. It wasn't required by the script, and at the top of the film it is disclaimed as "mostly fiction."

Johnny Flynn as David Jones/Bowie presents an image I don't associate with Bowie: childish, kind of stupid, lacking direction or drive. We take a really long road trip with him and his road manager, and his flashbacks and daydreams add up to nothing much. I feel for Flynn. I think his role is poorly written and misdirected.

Mark Maron does a fine job as Oberman, Bowie's road manager. Perhaps the story would have been interesting told from hisp erspective -- what he saw and heard. Instead, the film tells about things it doesn't seem to know much about. It's mostly surface.

The parade of anecdotes lead nowhere, several music writers pass through to little effect.

Jena Malone delivers, but her wig is bad and distracting... and what happened to the big bump in her dress? I guess we'll never know. Nothing unites her character while pregnant with the slender post-birth iteration.

This film does not excel at complete ideas.

I came into this with no expectations. I like David Bowie but I'm not a huge fan who knows most let alone all his music. So I wasn't watching this knowing everything about him and his music. But I actually expected some of his music to be in this, similar to Bohemian Rhapsody. This movie was boring and I found myself playing on my phone just waiting for it to end. All in all, I feel like they did a disservice to David Bowie, making him look like an idiot obsessed with becoming famous. They tried to add something deep by adding him being afraid of becoming like his brother, but it actually fell flat. There's a concert scene at the end where he finally goes on stage and the actor had zero sparkle or pizzazz or showmanship where David Bowie on stage had all of this. He literally looked like he was just laying on the stage where he's supposed to be making fierce poses. And I usually like Jena Malone but she had the worst accent in this (and wig and eyebrows) that I just couldn't stand her character. I don't think anyone making this movie recalled that she was American. Curious if the real Angie Bowie had gotten a British accent, I looked her up and she doesn't have one. So why did Jena Malone do the worst British accent in history?