"Greendale" is Neil Young's unbearably pretentious movie about the Green family of Greendale (pretty imaginative, eh?). It's basically an 87-minute-long music video, emphasis on LONG. Some of the songs are really good, such as "Devil's Sidewalk" and "Be The Rain", other songs are okay, and some just go on and on... like this movie. When it was over, I was so relieved!
I certainly don't begrudge or knock Neil Young for experimenting in a medium outside of rock 'n' roll. This is the fourth movie he's directed (the third as Bernard Shakey), so he has some experience with the medium. And he's chosen to tell the story in an experimental fashion, with grainy film and characters lip-syncing the words to the 12(?) songs that are part of the Greendale soundtrack. Fair enough. The problem is the story itself, or lack of one. Neil Young is making a lot of left-leaning points in this movie, but they're thrown at the audience without context, without a comprehensible plot or story. The movie reeks of pretentiousness and self-importance. I half-expected the town to become a character called Greendale that would leap down from the screen, and would personally make each audience member (including me) bow down and admit the importance of this movie, and what a work of utter genius it was.
Neil Young is one of the most famous living songwriters in the world, one of the few people who can be mentioned in the same breath as Bob Dylan. I'm 39-years-old as I write this, and I've heard most of Neil Young's albums spanning from his 1969 release "Neil Young", to his 1983 release "Everybody's Rockin'", where I completely lost interest in him. On almost all of Young's albums from that 1969-1983 period, there were one or two good or great songs on each album, and the rest completely forgettable. Even the one album I did own, "Rust Never Sleeps," had just one great song, I couldn't tell you what was on the rest of the album.
I mention this because I want to draw an analogy between his albums and "Greendale". Young should have felt obligated to give me more than two good songs to make it worth my 87 minutes and my $9.25 (in 2004 dollars). At least give me a story that's comprehensible. But there's no story here, just a lot of "save Alaska" sentiment in a muddled mess of a movie. I'll come right out and say it: this film has NO PLOT and NO STORY! What the hell did I just see? I should probably mention at this point that I'm a left-leaning guy who has never voted Republican, so I had high hopes for this movie.
If this movie is about a cause Neil Young wants to convert us to, he's not going to win any converts with this arty-elite meaningless jumble. I respect Neil Young, but this movie... What the hell did I just see?
I certainly don't begrudge or knock Neil Young for experimenting in a medium outside of rock 'n' roll. This is the fourth movie he's directed (the third as Bernard Shakey), so he has some experience with the medium. And he's chosen to tell the story in an experimental fashion, with grainy film and characters lip-syncing the words to the 12(?) songs that are part of the Greendale soundtrack. Fair enough. The problem is the story itself, or lack of one. Neil Young is making a lot of left-leaning points in this movie, but they're thrown at the audience without context, without a comprehensible plot or story. The movie reeks of pretentiousness and self-importance. I half-expected the town to become a character called Greendale that would leap down from the screen, and would personally make each audience member (including me) bow down and admit the importance of this movie, and what a work of utter genius it was.
Neil Young is one of the most famous living songwriters in the world, one of the few people who can be mentioned in the same breath as Bob Dylan. I'm 39-years-old as I write this, and I've heard most of Neil Young's albums spanning from his 1969 release "Neil Young", to his 1983 release "Everybody's Rockin'", where I completely lost interest in him. On almost all of Young's albums from that 1969-1983 period, there were one or two good or great songs on each album, and the rest completely forgettable. Even the one album I did own, "Rust Never Sleeps," had just one great song, I couldn't tell you what was on the rest of the album.
I mention this because I want to draw an analogy between his albums and "Greendale". Young should have felt obligated to give me more than two good songs to make it worth my 87 minutes and my $9.25 (in 2004 dollars). At least give me a story that's comprehensible. But there's no story here, just a lot of "save Alaska" sentiment in a muddled mess of a movie. I'll come right out and say it: this film has NO PLOT and NO STORY! What the hell did I just see? I should probably mention at this point that I'm a left-leaning guy who has never voted Republican, so I had high hopes for this movie.
If this movie is about a cause Neil Young wants to convert us to, he's not going to win any converts with this arty-elite meaningless jumble. I respect Neil Young, but this movie... What the hell did I just see?