Flame Movie Review

British supergroup Slade is apparently so super that I've never heard of them. A little research reveals, however, that they spawned 17 Top 20 hits in the UK throughout the 1970s, but didn't do much in America until Quiet Riot started covering their intentionally misspelled hits. (Their metal-ish sound is best described as glam rock without any actual glam.)

Alternately referred to as Flame, In Flame, and Slade in Flame, the film follows the band members as they take a fictionalized version of the group, here called "Flame," through a month or so in their lives. They play a show, get arrested, play some more, and eventually rise from obscure club band to megastars, their primary obstacle being a seedy manager. In 85 minutes, we pretty much get the full story of the band, at least as much as is understandable (the sound is awful and the accents are worse). It's straight from the Hard Day's Night school of filmmaking, just with more blood and much uglier stars.

If you're a Slade fan, you're presumably seen this film multiple times already and are eagerly looking forward to owning your own copy on DVD. For outsiders, I'm not sure if there's much here to capture your attention. Those not intimately familiar with the band simply won't care about their story (particularly the dastardly machinations undermining their success), and though some of their music is worth listening to, it doesn't come close to carrying the film in full. Frontman Noddy Holder (who appears on the DVD extras in a new retrospective interview) has a Jon Belushi charm about him, and the other bandmembers are engaging enough, but why saddle them with an "evils of the music empire" story? Perhaps a Yellow Submarine construct would have worked better?