Detroit Rock City

Set in 1978, Detroit Rock City follows four high school friends, including Edward Furlong’s Hawk and Sam Huntington’s Jam, as they embark on an eventful quest to attend a Kiss concert in another state. Filmmaker Adam Rifkin, armed with Carl V. Dupré’s screenplay, delivers a briskly-paced, unabashedly larger-than-life comedy that benefits from its pervasively affable atmosphere and proliferation of charming performances, as, in terms of the latter, the movie features (and benefits from) compelling work from an eclectic roster of such off-kilter performers as Lin Shaye, Natasha Lyonne, and Melanie Lynskey. (This is to say nothing of the completely agreeable efforts of the film’s stars, certainly.) It’s clear, then, that Detroit Rock City‘s overall impact is hindered by an episodic midsection that’s just about as hit-and-miss as one could possibly envision, and there’s little doubt, ultimately, that the picture contains its fair share of sequences that simply aren’t able to make the knee-slapping, laugh-out-loud funny impact for which Rifkin is obviously striving. (This is particularly true of a groaner of an interlude involving Joe Flaherty’s high-on-‘shrooms priest.) By the time the satisfying climax rolls around, however, Detroit Rock City has cemented its place as a decent-enough endeavor that has, thankfully, been geared to more than just dyed-in-the-wool fans of Kiss.

**1/2 out of ****