The Dirt
Always liked Motley Crue. Well, let me amend that. I didn't care much for Motley Corabi, but that was a short-lived experiment. It's not that it wasn't "good" music, but it was missing that semi out of control vocal chaos that Vince lent to the sound. The Corabi album was too bland, too pasteurized, too tame. He's a better vocalist than Vince, but so is Pavarotti. I don't really want to hear Pava singing Kickstart My Heart either.
As far as the band goes, I always felt they borrowed heavily from KISS even down to the scene where Nikki tells the rest of the band he "wants to create something people have never seen before" Well, that's the KISS mantra and has been for decades, well before Crue arrived in '81. And everything -- literally everything -- Crue did, KISS did it or did a version of it first. (That even applies to the groupie humping, hotel destroying excess).
This movie? Not really a fan. At various points, starting from the very first scene, I felt it existed in some ways simply as a vehicle to display joyous debauchery with no real attached story. And even at that it barely brushed the story that was the hedonistic rise and fall of Crue.
It played more like a series of "can you believe we really probably did this shit" vignettes than it did as a cohesive story of the band. The film was also extremely lacking in introspection.
I wanted to know why Nikki was in so much emotional pain and see his addiction and recovery played out. I wanted to get a deeper understanding of Vince's resentment of the band and how he dealt with the horrific tragedies (both self-inflicted and natural) that were part of his life.
I didn't need to see Nikki snorting coke off a chick's ass to know that he did that. Showing that (and numerous other scenes of over-the-top behavior) kept the film from reaching deep enough into who the members really were, what drove them, what fed their private demons (and how those demons guided the music). Why not tell the story of Shout at the Devil being written because Nikki's drug-induced dabbling in Satanism took an allegedly bizarre turn (including levitating silverware) -- and how that spooked him out of continuing the satanic imagery.
This movie only dealt with the consequences of their out-of-control behavior in a superficial manner. It didn't give us the story behind the band, it just gave us snippets of glossed over stories from within the band. The entire thing felt like it was just dabbing paint at various dots that had to be connected with no real sense of structure or cohesion.
I didn't hate it. The guys playing the band members -- with the exception of Ramsay Bolton as Mick Mars -- were decent enough. I just didn't feel as if the film cut deep enough to give us the real story. It only gave us the broad brushstrokes of what those of us who know anything about the band already knew. There were no revelations and no real reason to watch it unless you just like Crue music and want to see other people pretending to perform it.
If (when) there is a KISS movie I hope whoever does it will be willing to probe deeper into the real story behind the rise, fall, rise, fall and rise again of my painted heroes. Or maybe I'd really rather not know.
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