Critic Reviews

It's a depressing story made even more of a downer by the absence of any Stones-performed music from their prime '60s years.

Newcomer Gregory never captures the mercurial charisma for which Jones was famous (and which Jagger notoriously channeled in his movie debut, "Performance"), without which his story is just another cautionary tale about fast times, intemperate passions and bad dope.

Stoned carries a freaked-out buzz of nostalgia for the era when celebs willfully destroyed themselves for our amusement.

The good news here is that Woolley and his writers have taken the mystery surrounding Jones' tragic 1969 death as their main interest, and have adopted as fact the long-cherished rumor that the blond rocker's drowning was a case of murder. It may be speculative history, but at least it's a story.

A must for any true rock aficionado.

Thorogood allegedly confessed on his deathbed (in 1993) that he killed Jones, and while the movie convinces us that this might have happened, it never truly reveals who Brian Jones was before he fell apart. His indulgence, and his demise, play out in a void.

A clichéd rock-star film.

Despite good performances from Gregory, Considine and especially David Morrissey, the movie's true merits are all on the surface: its uncannily authentic period reconstruction and its successful use of stressed and textured film stocks. The filmmakers care more about this than about their characters, and it's hard for us not to feel the same.

The soundtrack is a mess, with period music out of sync with the period, as when the 1967 song, "White Rabbit," underscores a 1965 acid trip.

Its title may ring with pun and promise, but Stoned is a flat riff on Jones's short life. You'll get the highlights but no sense of what made him special -- or what really haunted him.