FilmBlather.com

"The real conundrum isn't to create a robot that can love. It's getting a human to love it back."

After watching Almost Famous, you will leave the theater feeling good. That's probably as close to a guarantee as I will come to all year. This astonishingly good autobiographical movie from Jerry Maguire director Cameron Crowe will have that effect on all but the most hard-hearted who approach it. Sweet, profound, romantic, nostalgic and impossibly entertaining, it's the kind of film that's predestined for the Oscars. We can only hope that it will be this and not American Psycho.

The protagonist's name is William Miller, but Crowe may as well have abandoned all pretense and used his own name. William (Patrick Fugit), an honest young man of 15, is two years older than everyone in his grade (his mother, played by Frances McDormand, shuffled him ahead two years without telling him). He seems to have a great future in store for him -- he's prodigiously smart and could eventually have pretty much any high-paying job he wants. But, like a lot of movie characters, he doesn't want to be something edgier than a doctor or a lawyer. William Miller wants to be a music critic.

For advice William goes to his idol, famous music critic Lester Bangs (Phillip Seymour Hoffman). Everyone else that William has approached has looked down on him because of his age; Bangs simply gives him good advice. "Be honest," he says. "Be unmerciful." And most importantly, "don't make friends with the rock stars." Before William knows it, he has a big assignment. Rolling Stone Magazine, having no idea that he is 15 years old, instructs him to go on tour with an up-and-coming rock band called Stillwater and then write a long, analytical piece. There is even a possibility that the story might make the cover.

But Almost Famous isn't about Rolling Stone or William's dream to be a writer. Nor is it a coming-of-age story in the traditional sense. It's a chronicle of an experience the ramifications of which may have been far more significant than a simple rite of passage. On the tour with Stillwater, William meets "Penny Lane" (Kate Hudson), a young girl who follows rock stars and occasionally has sex with them. She insists that she is not a groupie but a "Band Aid"; that she is in it for the music and the sex just sorta happens as a matter of fact. Her favorite partner is Stillwater's guitarist Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup), who's just befriended William. Yes, a love triangle develops, but it's nothing like you would expect.

The movie owes its success, in large part, to the absolutely remarkable young Patrick Fugit who takes an already engaging character and suffuses him with sincerity and feeling. On paper, a lot of his scenes would read corny; on screen, there is never a false moment. Hudson's Penny contrasts Fugit's William -- melancholy as opposed to full of life and promise -- and her performance, too, is terrific.

There's no real climax here, no "resolution" to speak of. That's because there is no conflict. The film isn't about good vs. evil or right vs. wrong. There are no villains here, only people with different goals and different perspectives.

The characters of Almost Famous don't always make the right choices. Its setting -- a high-profile rock tour -- is a hot spot for all types of decadence and most of it is there. And yet the film isn't edgy, unpleasant or extreme. Instead it's warm and almost gentle, with genuine concern for its characters. It left me in a great mood. I wanted to hug someone.