Tommy 1975
I tried to watch Tommy once and I don't think I probably made it all the way through. It took a few nights, but I made it through this time. It is a crazy movie and crazy that it was ever made. That doesn't make it compelling though. There are a lot of extras and some elaborate production design involved, but it always looks cheap with some really horrible special effects. Part of that was the time period, but I feel like they overreached and underdelivered. The most important aspect is probably the music and even that is really lacking. There are a few good songs ("Pinball Wizard," "Listening to You"), but so much of it doesn't even sound like The Who, for instance music on an organ at the beginning. While The Who have some great songs and there are a number of good ones here, there is a lot of filler, making it a long wait between the really big songs. And the story isn't good either, like they took some basic ideas and didn't know how to present everything, with two halves of the movie that don't seem to match. The first half with abusive, self-indulgent parents as Tommy shuts himself off from the world, and a second where he is a messiah in cooperation with his parents. The story is minimal and the characters are generally undeveloped, albeit colorful. Then there are episodes that seem to have nothing to do with anything else. You have to fill in a lot of blanks for yourself. Because it is an opera, there are no spoken lines so there are lot of scenes with no dialogue, just music as Roger Daltrey goes running or looks around. I will say Roger Daltrey is in amazingly great shape in this movie. The movie takes on a lot of baggage with attacks on religion and depictions of child abuse and drug abuse. Not really uplifting, but it is done in a kind of cartoony way, so it doesn't pay off like it definitely should have. Anyway, I knew this wouldn't be a good movie, but hoped that the spectacle of The Who's music plus appearances by Elton John, Tina Turner, Eric Clapton, and Jack Nicholson would make it worth the trip, but really it just isn't.
Written: 07 Apr 2025