Roadies

Whether you grew up with the Beach Boys, Bruce Springsteen or the Foo Fighters, Roadies and its lovably immature collection of flakes will summon the pure giddy fun of rock and roll. As they used to say on another great rockin' TV show, I'd give it an 85—it's got a good beat and you can dance to it.

At its best, Roadies is an entertaining ride through a world we're not meant to see, and its characters' belief in the importance of what they're doing can be contagious. ... Like Sorkin, Crowe may sometimes love his characters too much for their own good.

Roadies could level out as it continues through its first season, learning to balance its more mawkish, sentimental aspects with its clear dedication to music as art and the people who work to preserve its purity. But in its current state, the show is a lumpy, bumpy ride, one that will wholly appeal to those who ever Crowe’s most cloying works but only intermittently cast a spell over everyone else.

Roadies, with its cutesy characters, doesn’t bring him back to his early glory so much as remind us how far he has drifted from it. Crowe’s bona fides do show in Roadies, in the elaborate backstage settings and in the way they’re filmed as a kind of amusement park ride.

The characters are corny--Bill's a rock-and-roll lifer who's flawed but lovable, Shelli's a no-nonsense independent woman and dispenser of wisdom--but Wilson and Gugino are total pros, and they have a genuine chemistry. Which is more than can be said for the rest of the cast, despite the actors' best efforts.

Roadies is so convinced it's clever that it feels like it's talking down to us. It feels forced.

This is Crowe's The Newsroom, the moment when his trademark sincerity crosses over into preachy didacticism. [24 Jun 2016, p.54]