Critic Reviews

Penn Badgley saunters around with an air of spooky self-possession, and he does a dead-on impersonation of Buckley's high-vibrato wail.

Algrant’s film — which he co-wrote with Emma Sheanshang and David Brendel — is really about Tim Buckley’s son, Jeff, an equally adventurous rocker whose fame ultimately eclipsed his father’s, though he too died young.

Badgley, best known for playing "lonely boy" Dan Humphrey on Gossip Girl, is a revelation. He wears his role like a second skin.

Two Buckleys for the price of one, but the real star here is Penn Badgley.

Dan Algrant’s lyrical recreation of a father-son relationship seen over time, through memory and music, has a sense of urgent originality that works even apart from its great Tim Buckley score.

Director Daniel Algrant chose well with Badgley, who transcends the rather made-for-TV vibe with a decent rendition of Buckley’s haunting falsetto.

Director Dan Algrant’s conceit here is to take an actual event – a tribute concert for Tim held at a Brooklyn church in 1991, the concert that sparked Jeff’s own career – and wrap a fictionalized drama around it.

The film articulates this dimension of the story, regrettably, in little more than biopic platitudes and daddy-issue clichés...But it's not all bad. Badgley delivers a nuanced performance of such ferocity he almost singlehandedly makes a conventional film seem loose and improvisatory.

There is no doubt that Greetings From Tim Buckley is respectful, and thanks to Badgley and Rosenfield, does justice to both singers. But the film never quite connects father and son as each sharing the common bond of extraordinary talent or even similar personal woes.

The result is at once skillfully observed and a bit so-what.