CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Matho The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Goingbegging This is a story of two people, not ten, as you might assume from the poster, which suggests a bio-pic of the Rolling Stones and their various rock-chicks. We are actually looking at the last few weeks of Brian Jones, the group's genuinely brilliant creator, whose colleagues had just fired him on the grounds that he was no longer fit to create anything, after plunging too deep into the debauchery of the 60's music scene. He would soon be found drowned in his pool, possibly at the hands of an unpaid builder, Frank Thorogood, resentful at living so near yet so far from the pop-star life.The murder theory is far from proved, and even then there is an alternative suspect in the Stones' chauffeur and minder Tom Keylock, who plays a menacing role in this film, while others claim that the asthmatic Jones had simply gone swimming while stoned out of his mind.It is the relationship between Jones and Thorogood that drives this story - the glamorous celebrity and the humble tradesman, dazzled and disoriented by the young groupies casually brushing past him with their mini-skirted thighs.To Thorogood, Jones is generous with his drugs and his girls ("Haven't you ever heard of free love?"), but relentlessly tight with money. He was in fact a small, narrow, mean character, as shown by the offhand way he ordered his first girlfriend to abort their baby. But by now he is overtaken by debt, having failed to deliver good songs for some time. And Thorogood's men are wanting their wages rather badly...Those of us with vivid memories of the 60's will pick up some too-obvious images of people smoking cigarettes in a theatrical way, so you don't miss the point, and a poster of the Black and White Minstrels, long since branded as non-PC. Also Thorogood's wife commenting on his new trendy long hairstyle. And a few contemporary song-hits (sung in cover-versions only).The scenes of drug-taking do not really touch a nerve among us non-druggies, and as for the free love, there is some weird camera direction, especially at a climactic point where one of the girls seems to be resisting group-sex, while a male voice shouts "Experiment with me!". The nature of the experiment remains obscure.Meanwhile the swimming pool is featured almost like a character in the story. Jones and Thorogood are seen lounging and drinking beside it. When it's empty, they even make a recording down there, with echo effects. And there is a ghostly reappearance of Jones, thanking Keylock (but not Thorogood, you notice) for making him a martyr. "If it wasn't for you, I'd still be alive and no one would care." For Jones had earned immortality as founder member of the 27 Club, commemorating rock-stars who die at that age, for which there is (supposedly) a statistical spike.As one of the rock-chicks remarks, showing an unexpected shaft of profundity, "Stonesville. A very strange place."

wadechurton No, one should not expect a fictionalization of the Stones' story, but one does expect a reasonable attempt at a depiction of Brian Jones' time with them. As it is, the Stones are peripheral characters in the screenplay. Apart from a few bluesy jams, their own music is absent entirely. The story focuses on the relationships between Jones and his foreman/com-padre Frank Thorogood, out at the rock star's country estate. The large house is conspicuously the movie's prime set. Fine, 'Stoned' had a low budget. Then again, it's from a real-life story which was basically made up of people talking, fighting and falling over. Not so fine is that 'Stoned' had to be so bad. One of the hardest things to swallow about 'Stoned' was the casting of Leo Gregory as Jones. He does little characterization beyond a 'fatalistic' smile, and although 27 years old himself (Jones' age at the time of his death), on screen he looks ten years older and wears a risible array of mail-order hairpieces to represent the varying Jones eras. At times he looks like a young Jon Pertwee in a fright wig. The direction by Stephen Wooley is wildly erratic and at times laughable. Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit' underscoring an acid trip scene is the hack cinematic equivalent of the 'city/pretty' hack songwriting rhyme. It took Wooley ten years to put this botch-up together? Looks more like it was desperately cobbled together late Sunday night and breathlessly handed in by the Monday 9AM deadline. Another Bad Movie Night contender.

rowmorg The Rolling Stones ripped off the blues greats, and were just another example of white men ripping off black men, like Elvis and all the rest. I have no idea what contribution Brian Jones made to their tinny dance records, and I tended to agree with the outraged father of a fourteen year-old girl (depicted in an early scene) who said how much he despised him for getting her pregnant. Jones's despicable answer was that a doctor could do away with it. Way to go, Mr Wooley, set up your hero as a total tosser right from the get-go! Now we don't care about him at all, let's get on with the rest of the film, eh? There's no mystery about the pool death now, any more than there was in Sussex at the time: I was there. The guy was a decadent poltroon who had an asthma attack while swimming and accidentally drowned because he was hopelessly overweight and weak from chronic dypsomania. No one killed him, he killed himself, blatantly. Looking at the footage of the half-million attending the free concert for Brian held in Hyde Park, I wonder what got into everyone at the time. It must have been the very powerful sound systems that were coming in, and could reach big crowds and make more money than anyone had ever imagined. Give me Nora Jones instead of Brian Jones any time.

lazur-2 How does one cast a movie portraying at least three of most worshiped, admired, envied, charismatic people in the business? Add to that, two of them are still alive and performing, maintaining their persona quite effectively into their sixties. Perhaps if this all had occurred before high-quality film, video, and sound-recording was so easily available. As it is, any one from any generation can get a first-hand idea of how fascinating the Rolling Stones' entrance into the pop-music scene was. If you want to know all about the aspects of Brian Jones that really matter, listen to the music; his total immersion into whatever style he was interested in gave him almost instant ability on whatever instrument he wished to play; his knowledge of and ability at Chicago Blues guitar styles,(not the hot solos, but the foundational group styles), was unparalleled. If you want to understand why he was so adored; look at his pictures. You're not going to get the idea from this film, but it's almost not fair.