Satisfaction

As rock-and-roll flicks go, director Joan Freeman's Satisfaction , is a real bar band of a movie; it's derivative, unambitious and uneven, but it's also not half bad. If you bend your mind around its most awkward moments, it also offers at least some of what the title promises. [19 Feb 1988]

Despite the movie's ruinous cliches, Neeson puts some genuine anguish into his phonily written scenes as the '60s burnout. Bateman plays to him well, and Phillips, making her feature debut, has some funny moments in the flashy kook role.

The movie's rhythm and scope are pure sitcom, but that keeps the vehicle running smoothly over sizable plotholes. [15 Feb 1988, p.7C]

If the movie had any pace or energy, or even if the music were something other than tepid covers of songs, most of which were written before anybody in the cast was in rompers, then it might have been fun just to watch the actors strut around sexily onstage, living the rock life. But the thing just lies there. [15 Feb 1988, p.D4]

Satisfaction, an adolescent saga about a teeny-bopper rock band hoping to make it big, has Bateman trying to be hip and heavy at once. She comes off like Mallory, the mall-hopping phone monger from the sitcom. [17 Feb 1988, p.D6]

A tacky rock'n'roll drama which regurgitates clichés without any sense of shame.

The film attempts to pay tribute to vintage rock music--most of the songs are covers of golden oldies. But the renditions are so uninspired, the tribute falls flat.