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Okay first of all if your a big fan of one particular artist or more in the story and are expecting their role (or even their personality) to be fleshed out, chances are you will be disappointed. They are all (aside from the Dead Boys) limited to cameos and as such some people find they are a little generic. I'm not sure how much depth people expect in what often amounts to less than a minutes screen time, but there you go. It is not a long movie and it would have been impossible to do justice to everyone involved in that music scene in such a short time. In the restraints they had, I believe they did well enough.

Secondly there are some liberties taken with the actual music. It didn't matter to me as it was all great music, but if your picky on such things that may irritate you. An example of this is that the Ramones don't actually play any Ramones tracks, instead they player a Joey Ramone solo track that was released later. I don't really understand why they made those choices, but that is the way it is. Some people may feel the "live" sound isn't gritty enough. Again, I had no problem here, I wanted to hear good music and I did.

Perhaps those that get the most out of this films are those that like the music but aren't huge fans of anyone in specific. This is where I fell and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. I laughed and I cried and when it finished I was happy. Alan Rickman is the centrepiece of this film and that I think will make this enjoyable to the majority of viewers (as the IMDb average suggests) as he is as solid as ever. The rest of the cast is reasonable but no one stands out. The sets look very accurate (from what I can tell at least) and the whole thing is quite believable.

Taken out of the historical context this is basically a light hearted comedy about a growing music scene and a guy with passion, kindness and absolutely no business acumen. It feels like a "British Comedy" which for many will be fine, but given the topic is a New York club some may feel it inappropriate. If you read this review and still want to see the film then you will no doubt enjoy it as much as I have (or more).

I saw it on the big screen, and it was good! The film comes with a great soundtrack and lots of laughs too. The theater audience around me seemed to be enjoying the film. I was there at CBGB during this time period, and my band The Laughing Dogs played there. One of our songs is in the soundtrack. I am glad that this movie was made and I appreciate that the movie preserves the history of the place and of Hilly Kristal. Hilly provided opportunities to a lot of bands and a place for bands to play their original music. Many bands got signed with record labels after performing at CBGB. I found the sets and characters looked like the real thing, as if I was back there. I have written a more thorough review on my website.

From the director of Bottle Shock comes another love letter to the 1970s: CBGB. If you have no idea what that means, or if you know what it means but don't know what the letters stand for, you'll be very entertained by this movie. Full of literally dozens of songs from 1970s rock and grunge bands, it's a must-see for classic rock lovers. As you listen to Television, Blondie, The Velvet Underground, Talking Heads, The Stooges, The Ramones, The Police, and countless others, you'll get to see modern actors dressed up and lip-synching to their songs!

CBGB is a New York nightclub started by Hilly Kristal, played by a hilarious wigged-out Alan Rickman. His dive bar isn't paying his bills, so he transforms it into a nightclub where people can chill out and listen to "Country, Blue Grass, and Blues" bands. It gets turned into a hot spot where undiscovered punk bands play before they become famous. The beautiful Malin Akerman plays Debbie Harry, Taylor Hawkins plays Iggy Pop, Joel David Moore plays Joey Ramone, and countless others perform in a sort of "candid camera" that shows behind-the-scenes fun as well as performances from "way back when". This film completely captures the 1970s music scene, and the colors, lighting, incredibly grungy interior design, costumes, and wigs make it feel like a time capsule. If you know your bands, you'll get even more out of the humor, and if you don't, you'll just get a kick out of Alan Rickman's hilarious scenes with his mother, Estelle Harris, and his scenes with a grown up Rupert Grint. There's a lot to love about this tribute to the 1970s, but if you don't like that decade, don't even think about renting it.

I was a fan of CBGB music before I even knew what it was. I remember going to a second hand record store and asking them if they had any John Cale records. They said, yes, in the CBGB pile. The what? CBGB. Seeby-Jeeby..? And then they pointed at the section and there was a bunch of punk/new wave that I love. Heaven? Yes. Randall Miller seems to have a big passion for this music of the 70s and 80s too. I'm way more interested in the other upcoming project he had in mind called The Drummer, which was to star Vera Farmiga as Christine McVie and Aaron Eckhart as Dennis Wilson, but that film seems to not be happening anytime soon. Instead, I'm happy to check out CBGB to at least learn more about the place than 'it was a club.' The film prominently features musicians such as Television, The Dead Boys, Talking Heads, Blondie and Iggy Pop, but this story is about Hilly Kristal, the founder of the club, played by Alan Rickman. Although the film appears to glide through the narrative without much of a sense of jeopardy or pressure, it's very entertaining and colourful, designed in a magazine style with split screens and annotations every now and then. Even though that caricature tone does not match the gritty punk attitude of its topics, it's an accessible and simplified version that's great fun to watch, even if most of the accents are terrible.

7/10

"There's something there, there's definitely something there." After two failed attempts at running a bar and on the verge of bankruptcy Hilly Kristal (Rickman) throws everything he has into a bar where he wants to feature local country, bluegrass or blues bands. What it turns out to be is the launching pad for an entirely new sound for a new generation. As the legend goes punk wasn't born here but after bands such as Blondie, The Ramones, The Police and Iggy Pop punk was discovered here. I have to admit I am not a fan of punk music. I did like the Police and some songs by the bigger named artists but overall it's not one of my favorite genres. I wasn't really sure what to expect from this going in but I really ended up liking it. Alan Rickman is great in this (as always) and the story moved fast enough that there really wasn't a boring part in this at all. The actors they picked to play the bands were spot on, Malin Akerman, Rupert Grint and Kyle Gallner are all interesting choices. I really ended up liking this much more then I thought I would. Overall, this is not just a good movie about music, this is a good movie period. I give it a B+.

As someone who was "there" but as an outsider (14-year-old kid from NJ who idolized Punk magazine and especially the Ramones), I loved this film. Yes, I recognize a number of liberties were taken with the truth, but this film allowed me to relive the thrill I used to experience going to CBGB's (as we called it) back in the day (I started going around 1976 or so). Even more than that, it's great to get a glimpse of how CBGB's came to be.

More than that, the film works great as a film in and of itself -- the directing, pacing, acting and cinematography are all first rate, with nary a dull or dead spot throughout (until the end, but I'll get to that). I'm not generally one for tricks like the use of Holmstrom's art to frame the story, but since it's Punk magazine we're talking about, it makes perfect sense for this film.

The film just sails along -- I suppose partly because it's so much fun to see the various bands, and how much fun the actors had portraying the band members' quirks (the Joey Ramone character is spot on... ). In fact, I would have liked it if the film had been extended to include more of the early groups (they left out Suicide, who were everywhere back then) and more of the live performances. I'm a little torn by the decision to have them lip sync to album material -- on the one hand, it's the music we remember, on the other hand, most of the bands have live material available, even recorded at CBGB's, why not use some of that?

However, by the end... the film runs out of steam a bit. I think that comes partly from the decision to focus a bit too much on the Dead Boys storyline, knowing how doomed that band was, and how entirely outclassed they were by most of the other bands featured (Television, Talking Heads, Ramones, Blondie). Fortunately, the film only sags in the last 15 minutes or so, and it's still not enough to spoil a fine film dealing with a very important part of American -- and world -- music history.

For me, personally, this period shaped my entire life, certainly from an aesthetic point of view.

And great news! There's now a Best of Punk Magazine book available! (I still have my original copies around somewhere, but I can't wait to show this book to my kids!)

The historical story line line is very entertaining and interesting. Rickman does a good job as Hilly whom I never heard of before this movie. What a character. The talent that went thru his joint was amazing. A true pioneer ( maybe by accident) of cutting edge rock. You won't be sorry you watched it. Great sound track.

Saw the CBGB Movie last night... Great job! no car crashes.. just Hilly's truck, no alien invasion, no love story unless you count the part with.. Well, I wont mention any names.. Just a story about a little club that could.. at least for a little while. Alan Rickman did capture the essence of Mr. K.. this is not a documentary so I did not mind the time line of certain things not being accurate, it was entertaining and if you were not fortunate enough to have been there back in the day you can still learn a thing or two about the beginnings of Punk Rock. Yes there were many bands that played that stage and some are upset for not being included.. perhaps writing scathing reviews.. I was happy to be there "cant all be rock stars" Great tribute to Hilly at the end when Talking Heads were added to R&R Hall of Fame. I loved it and do want to see it again!

Regardless of the inaccuracies, the music is great and the film provides a small glimpse into the scene at the Bowery club. Alan Rickman is wonderfully droll and captures the spirit of Hilly. Nice seeing a few old rockers pop up in cameos. Would have been nice to see more character development and have the bands that helped kick off the club and the punk scene be portrayed more than cardboard cut-outs. You can practically smell the stale beer and pee. I would suggest reading Legs McNeil's, "Please Kill Me" to supplement the film's account of the mid 70's NY music scene. Some casting was spot on, but the Lou Reed scene was pathetic and the actor was horrible. I like Justin Bartha, as well, but Stiv Bators was hardly adorable. The wigs were ridiculous too.

Rickman rules. Because he's Alan Rickman. Other than to watch a great actor work his craft there's nothing worth seeing here. Low energy, unexciting and a poorly written work. Everything that punk isn't.

Special shout out to the scriptwriters - do you know how many kids in the early 70s used the words "dude" and "newbie"? Hint- none.

There are a few 5 star user reviews on here that rabbit on about "one man's mission", etc. Please note that in my opinion the critics' reviews more accurately reflect what this film is about and what it stands for.

I was quite involved in the CBGB and downtown New York music scene in the 1970s. I was also a good friend and business colleague of Hilly Kristal, the man whose vision is supposedly being depicted in the film.

In my opinion it does not reflect what Hilly would have wanted his legacy to be. Why? Not because it's main "laugh lines" revolve around subjects like his dog's loose bowels; not because it dwells on his supposed lack of business acumen(tough to not know anything what you're doing about business and leave an estate of $3.7 million); and not because of all of the other factual and musical mistakes in the film that others have pointed out already. I will not bother to list them all. Most of the critics' reviews do list them successfully.

To me why this film is so bad is two fold.

1. It doesn't reflect the spirit of downtown NY in any way I ever saw except possibly the parody of it that was Punk Magazine which we all admired as a humorous side line to events at the time but in no way represented the artistic aspirations of the early artists ((I stress early as in Television, Ramones, Patti Smith, Mink De Ville, Suicide) who were supported by Hilly and the other club owners of NY and who frequented CBGB, Max's Kansas City and the other bars downtown and uptown.

2. It's incredibly badly made. Almost everything about it on the production, direction, script and technical side is appallingly amateurish.

The "spirit" of downtown NY that Hilly Kristal put forward and that the film producer's are trying to invoke was one where young artists could hone their skills and perform what they wanted trying to get to the next rung of success in their chosen fields.Everyone tried to better themselves with every performance.

Whether the production team wanted to play the story as a comedy, a tragedy, a musical, a comic book or whatever is irrelevant. It could have been any of these but whatever was in their minds they missed the boat by simply not doing it well. The film comes off as turgid, boring and confusing.They violated the primary premise of Hilly Kristal by messing up their craft so badly.

The participants and supporters of the film who prattled on about how historically correct it was going to be justify their many mistakes with the claim that "It's only a movie". Well any movie is "only a movie". So they want us to believe that CBGB The Movie is a light-hearted comedy and "only a movie"? It could have been but I don't think that many will find it even remotely funny except perhaps the people who are participants in the film and who are looking to gain some sort of supposed financial or career success out of it.

Please take the raves from audience reviewers with a grain of salt.

Please don't take my review or others by audience viewers too seriously either.There are far too many people who were creatively there at the time or who are fans of the real work that came out of the scene who dislike the film as much or more than I do. We are being termed "haters" by the film's participants. There are an awful lot of us "haters" out there then.

There are also a great deal of Stana, Rupert, etc. fan club members who along with the participants and misty eyed memorialising ex workers from the club who are skewering audience reviews the other way.

But in this case (which is rare) please do heed the warnings of the overwhelming majority of critics who really,really dislike this horribly crafted little film.

Disappointing and sad rather than uplifting and funny.

I like this movie. But I just want to give a nod to Bradley Whitmans sleazy coked out record exec denouncing the bowery just as he did at the dinner table in Scent of a Woman just before colonel slade attacks him. Just wondered of anyone else caught that

I have no emotional investment in the time, place, or music represented in the movie CBGB. If anything, I prefer the Country, Blue Grass, and Blues Hilly original meant to present in his bar. But, never having been to CBGB or having any great interest in the bands who developed there, I can react to the movie as a movie instead of worrying about whether the CBGB in the movie really matches up with what I saw there or whether the actors chosen to play my favorite band really look or sound like the people they're playing.

So? I liked the movie. I liked Hilly, the main character in the movie who started CBGB. The film is frequently amusing, such as when Hilly's mom (played by the same actress who was George Costanza's mom on Seinfeld) enjoys a bowl of the chili.

The acting is fine. Rickman does a good job and I didn't realize until the credits that it was Freddy Rodriguez very convincingly playing the junkie Idaho.

I went to see a screening with a musician who'd played CBGB in the early 90s and he said, yes it was that filthy and Rickman does a pretty good job as Hilly. One of the producers and an actress who'd had a small part in the film were also there and added a lot of information.

If you're interested in the start of Punk and weren't there, you'll probably like the movie. If you were there, it may depend on how much historical accuracy you expect. You shouldn't expect a lot of historical accuracy in any movie though, so take it for what it is: a fairly entertaining movie.

It's fun, it's wild and it's interesting. However historically accurate it isn't (apart from the toilets). They miss out huge amounts and white wash oh so very much, by the way the lip syncing is awful.

Apparently, I'm practically the only reviewer that wasn't there or personally knew Hilly himself. I grew up in a smaller-ish mid-western town and was introduced to punk by a girl from high school in the late 70's, and became aware of CBGB in the mid 80's. CBGB was always a mecca I wanted to visit but never got the chance to, so I leaped at watching this movie.

First off... It' important to remember this is the fictionalize account of the legendary New York city punk club CBGB and Hilly Kristal, and not a documentary. I went into watching this with the expectations there would be many factual errors. I noticed some items like band stickers on the walls from the wrong decade, but it's a Hollywood movie... not a documentary. I think the end credits says it best where it says "And we know that Iggy Pop never played at CBGB... Just deal with it.".

This location was so instrumental to music that I doubt a 3 hour movie could have done it justice. They had to pack a lot of story into a short amount of time so no one watching this movie should do so expecting a historically accurate movie. I enjoyed how they interweaved Punk magazine into the story. I felt it helped keep an upbeat, lighthearted message about Hilly and CGBG and kept the plot moving.

Now it's a double edged sword here with my criticism. The plot got pretty thin in the middle of the movie as the director tried to give the viewer a idea of the energy that was going on with the bands playing there, and some of the insanity I'm sure went on there on a regular basis. While the plot got non-existence, it was still enjoyable to imagine being there and seeing bands like the Ramones, Blonde, Patti Smithe playing.

Even though I thought there were points where the plot got lost, and the acting was somewhat awkward and forced at points, I still thought it was well done. My one big complaint is the ending was sort of sudden and anticlimactic.

Overall I really enjoyed the movie personally... but I didn't have high expectations on what it was going to be either. I guess if you're a punk purist or were actually there, then someone might be disappointed in the movie.

Having the absolute privilege of playing at CBGB's in the early 80's (opened for the Beastie Boys and Bad Brains... we were God awful) I was excited for this film. I wanted to love it, but it's weird... it just didn't have any pace or point of view. Hilly was always very kind to me (as I spent years watching bands there) and some of my best memories of my youth can be traced to the punk scene that exploded there (and the fights from the idiots at the flop house next door)

But for however great "Sid and Nancy" was capturing an era, "CBGB" misses the boat. You never really get to "know" anyone.

Randall Miller is a passionate director and what he captured so beautifully in "Bottle Shock" is missing here. I mean, how many dog (crap) shots can we have?

Wanted to love it... just didn't. :(

Sorry

Look, full disclosure: I didn't have any of the baggage of ever hearing of or being at CBGB. I lied to get into the preview: (I'm sixty one and the cutoff was 60). I didn't fancy myself a fan of punk. Didn't really even know what it was. I LOVED this movie start to finish. The story, the texture, the music all lifted me into a different world. The cuts between this punk magazine and this story amazed me as they worked. The music is a dream collection and the quirky story of the accidental birth of this genre of music made me smile end to end. That there is a Jewish back story to punk music, the Godfather of punk, the lunacy of swastika sporting musicians given their chance in life by a Yid, just made it the sweeter. If this movie makes it to your area ever (which it probably won't in Portland, Oregon), race to it and enjoy!

I am not a big fun of punk maybe that is why I didnt find this movie great. Well performed and informative but the music part was really bad.

I saw this movie because I had written a screenplay about 6 years ago about The Dead Boys and CBGBs that circulated town and was never bought. I was curious - and a little suspicious - needless to say when this movie went into production. My fears were unfounded, almost nothing I wrote was in this sloppy, scotch-taped up plot less pile of scenes.

First off, you have endless possibilities for interesting stories. This was a seminal period in rock n roll history. But to make the "Hilly Kristal Story" is a ridiculous choice. He simply is not the hero of this scene or this movement. He was a passive bar owner who was in the right place at the right time. He waddles around the movie with no interest in anything other than making a buck. I met and interviewed Hilly - around 2006. He seemed like he barely cared and even admitted he was in the right place at the right time.

The Dead Boys are a totally interesting story and they are treated like a bunch of spoiled sh*theads. Every cameo rock star appearance is silly and embarrassing. Iggy Pop gets like one line? No lines for Dee Dee? Where was Johnny Thunders? Where was Seymour Stein and Sire Records? Why does Legs friggin McNeil use the word 'dude' constantly - remember we are in 1977? Lou Reed cameo was nauseating. Sloppy.

But here's what's really awful: It feels fake and made up from half-remembered anecdotes. The fact that Hilly's daughter - incidentally an EP on the film - plays a crucial part of the story also rubs me the wrong way. CBGB was about the music, not about some guy who ate Hostess cupcakes and paid the rent.

Plot: none. No climax, no resolution. No character development. Characters enter and leave and reenter and leave. The story opens on the so-called "inventors of punk" - um, no. They made a fan magazine and wrote an OK book on which the source material was based. They were witnesses, not inventors. And they served no point in the film except to irritate me with political rants every 30 minutes. By the way, that's 4 appearances, because this is a slow-moving 120 minute movie whose best scenes are between an incidental made-up cop character and the bar- owner. Nothing happens except the usual "you're on thin ice mister."

The sets are vaguely realistic, though the Agnostic Front stickers really made my hair curl. The cartoons were OK. This may sound like I'm jealous because this was somehow pushed through the system with a huge catalog of punk songs (most of the budget must have gone to Sting, BTW) - but I'm relieved that there is still a good movie or miniseries to be made about this era. This just isn't it.