First things first. Sitting in the audience watching Almost Famous with the express purpose of reviewing it can be a little intimidating. At some point, I realized I was sitting in a darkened theater with a notebook in my lap, watching a kid who wants to be a rock journalist sitting in a darkened theater watching a band. At that point, especially because I write about music also, watching Almost Famous, for me, seemed to be comparable to Slaughter watching Spinal Tap. No wonder the critics like this film. In an odd way, it glorifies everything they got into writing for. William Miller, the kid based partially on Crowe himself when he was a budding rock journalist, is a wide-eyed idealist with critical powers beyond his years. He's confident only when he's giving his opinion, and is just starting to explore a world in which he hopes to be comfortable some day. Not the rock and roll world, but the world of professional politics and personal relationships. Getting good reviews from most writers for Almost Famous should be like shooting fish in a barrel.

So, having made that disclaimer… *Ahem* Almost Famous is a great movie.

There are great precedents for the rock and roll coming of age movie, from American Graffiti to Backbeat, and 70s kitsch and disco tributes have been all over the big screen in the past few years. And while Almost Famous is cut from the same cloth, it manages to tell its own story. The context is specific, starting with Miller's childhood, where his politically and socially conscious mother (Frances McDormand) shelters him and his sister from everything she considers evil, including commercialism, drugs, and, of course, rock and roll. He's a bright kid, partly because of his mother's fanaticism, and when he gets turned on to rock and roll, his path is set.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is brilliant as Lester Bangs, the incendiary rock critic who helped Crowe get started as a writer. His role isn't the focus of the film, but Bangs is an important catalyst, bringing perspective to the film the same way he brought perspective to the world of rock journalism. He's basically Miller's chain-smoking Jiminy Cricket, giving him his first real assignment and helping him sort out his big break - a feature on Stillwater for Rolling Stone. He lays out what's going to happen when Miller follows the band on tour, and for the most part, everything he warns him about happens. He meets the women, through groupie Penny Lane, who will woo him from his purpose. He starts to make friends with the band, who just want to tell him what to write. He shapes his stories with the Rolling Stone editors, here presented as a clique of rock-geek Citizen Kanes. The map is fairly well drawn at the beginning.

One of the best parts of the film is the weight these relationships take on, and who the people behind them turn out to be. No one's motives are especially clear. But no one is painted too broadly as the bad guy, as often happens when the rock and roll fantasy is involved. Someone has to be the heavy - the scapegoat for all of the angst knotting the characters up inside. There are wankers, but no one is really evil, with the possible exception of one tenacious fact checker, a minor character. Rolling Stone chief Ben Fong-Torres is caught up in the drama outside of the music. Stillwater singer Jeff Bebe (Jason Lee) is typically narcissistic enough to wear a T-shirt from his old band while on tour with Stillwater. And while Miller's mother is fanatical, she also provides the moral backbone, which in an odd way pairs her with Lester Bangs. Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), the groupie who looks out for Miller on the road, is living in a dream world, but eventually will be forced to grow up and move on. All the characters are flawed in some way, but the trouble comes with how those flaws go up against each other, rather than as the result of someone trying to stamp out someone else's way of thinking or lifestyle.