Too much of everything

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Bald Dog is a mockumentary-style presentation of the artistic crisis of a Hungarian band, which attempts to update its sound to the modern times so that they might get more fans and be on the radio and on TV. The movie begins with the band playing "Johnny B. Goode" in an almost empty small-town bar. The tires of their bus get slashed, their landlords chase them away - a really hard time for the band which almost causes it to break up. They decide to continue and to do that they understand they have to change their music and image. However, what they do to achieve this seems illogical - they get a crippled overweight vocalist missing a leg and with a crutch, and play dirty and obscene American-style blues rock, and save an ugly dog from the dog crematorium to become their mascot. Talking about obscenity, Bald Dog has quite a bit of it - language, nudity - one really wonders how this movie could be made in a communist country. Apparently, it was not impossible! The band remains true to their roots and at the end of the movie we see them at their peak - playing at an open-air festival in the forest with many long-haired fans headbangin' to their filthy music. The movie itself feels a bit stylized but not overly so and as a whole comes as quite authentic. It is beautifully made, with a very decadent atmosphere of urban and mental decay. There are certain images that leave the viewer wandering - what is the woman doing with the machine in the beginning of the movie? Why was the front of that car buried under a heap of rubble? Sometimes the movie becomes black-and-white - I am not sure exactly why but it seems to me when the band-mates’ "blues", their emotional turmoil, is the strongest. That is when we are also showed decadent citations by famous rock and jazz musicians (Mick Jagger, Miles Davis, Muddy Waters, etc.) At one point we are also shown concert footage of the famous Hungarian band Omega playing their awesome song "Girl with Pearls in Her Hair". Even though my personal opinion might be a little biased, because I like blues rock a lot, I think Bald Dog is a great movie with a lot of artistic merit and that may be enjoyed by anyone.