Critic Reviews

CBGB has more of the original prankish punk spirit than it even recognizes.

Rickman is too theatrical, and too British, to vanish entirely into the person of Hilly Kristal. But he's entertaining to watch, and ultimately one of the more persuasive actors in a movie that suffers from as many odd casting decisions as Lee Daniels' The Butler.

You can’t help feeling as if Miller has missed an opportunity. Punk rock was all about manic energy, unbridled (and often unfocused) passion. CBGB plays more like a folk tale.

Alan Rickman's lead performance highlights a sincere but insubstantial rock pic.

Punk may not be dead, but this picture is D.O.A.

As a film, the result is static, like Ang Lee’s similarly muddled “Taking Woodstock.”

The absolute antithesis to the pioneering punk spirit it tries to portray.

In its stylistically flailing stab at authenticity, CBGB ends up merely a mess of caricatures.

No doubt a decent movie could have been made about the behind-the-scenes life of CBGB, but CBGB isn’t it. It’s as flip about the club as it is about Kristal, the music, and the time and place that shaped it all.

As the film moves from one musical performance to another, the result increasingly feels like a series of celebrity impersonations set to a best-of-punk compilation album.