this contains spoilers ! if you dig the music of the 70's and punk in particular you will enjoy this. I certainly did. This tells the story of the founding of the famous NY club CBGB and PUNK magazine. Hillel Kristal borrowed money from his mom to buy the Palace Bar in the Bowery.This after two bankruptcies...LOL. His daughter , Lisa, dropped out of college for lack of funds. So she is hired, fired then rehired by her father, Hillel aka Hilly. It has a superb cast and the CBGB set is spot on.Hilly and Lisa are played by Alan Rickman and Ashley Greene. I loved their performances. They are actually quite funny here.Hilly : "You gotta spend money to make money." Lisa : "You gotta have money to spend money to make money. And since you spend all the money you make,you don't have any money to spend. So you might wanna think about saving the money you make instead of spending the money you make"...Way to go Lisa ! Also, Ashley's New Yawk accent is right on the money.Freddy Rodriguez plays Idaho, a violin bowing homeless junkie that Hilly takes under his wing.We see a NY style shakedown of Hilly thwarted by his new found biker buddies, the Titans of Hell. We see The Ramones, Television, Talking Heads, The Dead Boys and, towards the very end, The Police all auditioning for Hilly to get a gig at CBGB. We also see Blondie and Iggy Pop singing, I Wanna Be Your Dog. And Patti Smith perform,Because The Night. I love this movie and have watched it numerous times because of where it takes me. Just before the closing credits Hilly says that he opened the club because he thought country music was gonna be the next big thing...and it was ...in Nashville.LOL.During the ending credits we see the real Talking Heads accepting their induction into the Rock'N' Roll Hall Of Fame and what they do to honor Hilly is so moving.That is a MUST SEE !The only negative I can talk about is the movie spends too much time on The Dead Boys. Apparently Hilly saw something in them and invested a lot of money to manage them and nearly lost his club to this band that eventually crashed and burned.

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).

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!

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.