Due to the sudden famine of decent movies to watch with my kid, I started getting desperate.  Then I heard a movie was playing that featured Bowie.  I of course, had to go.  Problem was it was on it’s next to last day showing, and it only showed at 4:15.  The boy gets off his bus at 4:00. That meant it was iffy at best.  Sure enough, he showed up at 4:02.  We drove faster than I like, slower than he likes.  We got in the theater at 4:19.  The movie literally started the second we sat down.  The first words of the movie were “Dear David Bowie”.  We immediately saw The Lodger on the wall.  Almost immediately we had fourteen year olds citing Velvet Underground.  I was thoroughly stumped.  No fourteen year olds go around citing Velvet Underground for anything.  I doubt very many even have a clue who they were.  This movie looked like it was ready to rock in a major Moonage way.  It was even throwing Ziggy era Bowie as filler music.  How much better does it get than that?

Then, it jumped the shark.  It stumbled around with the cliche boy meets girl, loses girl, gets girl back, first kiss, mom making out with teen boys, and oddly, music that was elevator music from the 80′s.  It went from showing Bowie references such as a bookstore I think it was called Rebel Rebel, to sounding a lot like the Partridge Family.  It quickly became typecast Vanessa Hudgens with all her clothes on.

But, every 30 seconds or so, we got to hear “Dear David Bowie”.  So I endured.  Even my six year old was perplexed why this kid kept saying “Dear David Bowie”.  He knows Bowie’s old.  In other words, Bowie isn’t relevant to a six year old.  I’ll not ruin the ending here.  But, it’s Bowie’s only real appearance in the movie.  And, it was good.

I recommend this movie only to parents who love Bowie and have small kids.  Bowiefiles will feel kinda creepy trying to sit through it without little wonders.  One older kid in the audience did.  He kept kinda wigging out during the movie.  The oddity was getting to him.

One thumb up for this flick.  I enjoyed the novelty of it, but that’s it’s only saving grace.  I found it odd a movie was more or less marketed to either 40+ somethings who would be true Bowie fans, or small kids.  As much of an icon as he is to my age group, he’s oblivious to young kids.  Telling a six year old we’re going to see a Bowie movie just gets you a very quizzical look.  Mine was expecting Screaming Lord Byron.  He didn’t get that.  He did enjoy the movie tho.

By the way, the movie was not named “Dear David Bowie”.  That would have been perfect.  It’s called Bandslam.