For me, a disappointing sequel to the successful, breezy "That'll Be The Day" as the bright young scallywag Jim MacLaine (David Essex) somewhat improbably tries his luck in the rock industry only to crash and burn by the end having lived the rock dream to the bitter end, along the way cramming into the narrative as many rock clichés as you can think of. So we get the inevitable "musical differences" which cause him to leave his band The Stray Cats, encounters with groupies, strained relationships with the estranged wife and son he left behind, his rise to solo mega-stardom and eventual retreat to a drug-filled existence leading to the inevitable downbeat conclusion. Rock fans might derive fun from the peripheral characters' purely coincidental resemblance to any living person, as the legend goes, with a foreign intellectual interfering girlfriend (Yoko Ono?), old-style matey, but sexually ambivalent manager (Brian Epstein?) and loudmouth, money-obsessed American manager (Allan Klein), as well as Essex's character's own career path which seems to echo Jim Morrison of the Doors (who also died in seclusion in continental Europe), but the situations are too conventional and predictable to really engage. On the acting front, Essex's limitations are exposed and he fails to draw in the viewer, unlike his lighter playing in "That'll Be The Day", although more experienced actors like Adam Faith and Larry Hagman get more to chew on in their roles. Another weak point is the original music, (a failing also of the much later "Dreamgirls") which especially when set against contemporary classic tracks by The Who, Kinks and Mamas and Papas, to name but a few, is sorely lacking in catchiness and leaves you wondering just how The Stray Cats actually got to the top of the charts. This is slightly surprising given that the musical director here is the talented Dave Edmunds, whose own solo career abounds in recreations of mid-60's pop and rock. Ironically, trivia-fans, Edmunds in the 80's successfully produced the popular rockabilly band The Stray Cats, best known for "Runaway Boys" and "Stray Cat Strut"! In the end an overlong, over-pretentious movie and evidence if it was needed, that the best way to portray rock star excess is with parody, e.g. "The Rutles" and of course "This is Spinal Tap".
