Cinema: Absolutely Fabulous

Crowe carries no such grudge. He has warm feelings for all the characters (except the Rolling Stone staff; they come off as naive and capricious, first deciding that an unseen article from an unknown writer should be a cover story, then killing it briefly when the band disputes a few quotes). Crowe likes the rockers, the groupies, the exasperated desk clerk at a rowdy hotel. And dammit, he loves his mom.

That's nice. Better yet, it is good screenwriting: giving each character his reasons, making everyone in the emotional debate charming and compelling, creating fictional people who breathe in a story with an organic life.

One associates this equipoise, this generosity of spirit, with Crowe's mentor, the writer-director James L. Brooks (Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News), who produced Crowe's Say Anything...and Jerry Maguire. Those early Crowe films, for all their nifty moments, reduced minor figures to stereotypes, skirted believability, settled for easy answers. The new one is a big step up. By recalling (and subtly rouging) the inner adult of his childhood, the Brooks protege becomes his own man.

So Almost Famous is almost fabulous. Oh, all right. The movie's so clever and endearing, you can forget the almost.

--By Richard Corliss