Cast
Hawk (Edward Furlong)
Jam (Sam Hunnigton)
Trip (James DeBello)
Lex (Giuseppe Andrews)
Christine (Natasha Lyonne)
Amanda Finch (Shannon Tweed)

Directed by Adam Rifkin Written by Carl Dupre
Rated R for drug content, nudity, violence, and strong language
Running Time: 95 minutes Distributed by New Line Cinema

Detroit Rock City is an awful film that never takes off. Hawk (Furlong), Jam (Hunnigton), Trip (DeBello), and Lex (Andrews) are four teenage friends that worship the band KISS. The year is 1978, and the four friends have tickets to see KISS (live in concert) in Detroit. However, once Jam's mother finds the tickets, she burns them and tells her son that KISS stands for Knights in Satan's Service. This is the first of many problems that the friends encounter. After a few pranks and fights, the group finds themselves having to take all risks and sacrifice everything to try and get to and in the KISS concert.

Detroit Rock City is one of the worst films of the year. The only good thing in the movie is the soundtrack, which includes many popular hits from the 70s.

The script for Detroit Rock City is terrible. It contains absolutely nothing; no plot, no development, and certainly no thought. The dialogue is flat out awful as well. It is like the characters just curse and say offensive phrases to do it, with no meaning behind it. The film probably would have been better if the actors just improvised the whole time.

The acting is also ineffective. Edward Furlong gives his worst on-screen performance ever. Detroit Rock City was not a good follow-up film choice for Furlong, after his brilliant performance last year in American History X. Another young talent that I was surprised to see in this film was Natasha Lyonne. Lyonne plays Christine, a disco loving girl that ends up riding with the group to Detroit. The other actors in the film are pretty much all unknown actors and after this film they'll probably stay unknown.

Detroit Rock City is just a stupid and disgusting wanna be movie. It tries to be like other films. The film tries to make drugs funny like in Dazed and Confused, but it doesn't work. It also tries to have crude humor and bathroom jokes maybe like in American Pie, but it doesn't work. Finally it tries to have the characters develop their own phrases and language like in Swingers, but once again it fails. The film becomes very annoying and leaves you wondering how did this film ever get made?

Report Card Grade: F

Beastman's Movie Reviews
Copyright, 1999 Joseph C. Tucker