ALMOST FAMOUS is the easier one to deal with, even though it is more complex as a film. Based on Crowe's own experience as a teenage rock critic, it is actually in the familiar genre territory of the Coming of Age Film. Young William Miller (Patrick Fugit) graduates from being a low-rent freelancer for Lester Bangs' CREEM magazine to landing an assignment from ROLLING STONE itself, while more or less accidentally being on tour with up-and-coming band Stillwater. Fugit is convincing as a bright, talented, and rather naive young man, although at times his body language and facial expressions reminded me too much of Doogie Howser. I can't say, though, that I was able to grasp where his passion or the band's passion for playing come from. There are the usual cliches about how "It's all about the music, man" but the genuine source of that desire rarely comes clear, and the few musical examples that try to illustrate it--the band bus group singing along to Elton John and so forth, are charming in their way but hardly illuminating.

The little bit of light that does come is in the too-few and too-brief scenes with Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs, sitting guru-like along among his albums, a suggestion of both devotion and its costs.  Where the film succeeds better is in the aspect of personal relations.  William is brought along on the tour by the "Band Aids," the self-designated tour followers who want to give the band their complete support short of "actual sex" (as defined by our current President), but even that resolve just sort of slips away with little comment. The major player here is "Penny Lane," a pretty and smart young woman who is not smart enough to see what a losing hand she has dealt herself.

There's also William's relationship with his mother, an interesting study in contradictions--a free-thinking university professor who tries to keep her kids on a very tight and (for 1974) politically correct leash but gives them (or at least her son) far more leeway than any mother I'm aware of. The strength of these roles lies in their performances by, respectively, Kate Hudson (Goldie Hawn's daughter) and Frances McDormand. Both roles could easily have been caricatures, but these two women, McDormand especially, breathe life and joy into their parts.

This film is rated R: young men should see it with their mothers.

Alas, it has too much going against it, in particular a borrowed plot that drags on without doing anything new. Essentially a ROSEMARY'S BABY filtered through THE X-FILES, the story is about a hotshot flyboy astronaut (if they still make that RIGHT STUFF type any more--any comments from Alex, if he's lurking out there?) who has gone on a routine space shuttle mission where Something has happened. His deeply adoring wife (Theron) becomes more and more concerned as their lives change. He becomes a consultant for a big aerospace firm in NY and her decor changes from country calico to Manhattan Brutal. When she become pregnant, things get stranger and stranger.

There are suggestions that all of her concerns are really in her head--she'd had a breakdown some time before--but that, among many other themes here, is never developed in any consistent way. It doesn't help that Theron is playing Mia Farrow right down to her haircut, and that her situation reprises much of what she did better in THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE. Depp, as the astronaut, starts out very strongly--he has that whole quiet, ironic but gruff Sam Shepard machismo down perfect--but as his character becomes wierder his acting becomes less and less interesting. Joe Morton is largely wasted in a role that also turns out to be predictable, and the more interesting supporting characters are seen only in tantalizing snippets that leave you hungry for a movie that you're not watching.   The ending, meant to be chilling and ironic, is simply bland and predictable.

Ravich has such a strong sense of visual style that he's a director to watch. But this is not a film to watch. 

Better you should just listen to the song.

The film is pretty enough to look at. New York City, as in WHEN HARRY MET SALLY and YOU'VE GOT MAIL, glistens with with a shiny surface beauty and desirability--as do its stars, Richard Gere and Winona Ryder.  But as a romantic melodrama, it will jerk more jeers than tears.  Gere plays Will, a restaurateur, owner of a place so trendy that he can have his picture splashed across the cover of NEW YORK magazine. Just what he does exactly at his restaurant is left unclear. As a chef, he makes nice-looking salads. As a restaurant owner, he does not seem to have to spend much time at the shop. (That new book by a real chef, exposing the grittier view of the glamorous life from the kitchen, exposes Will's character as pure fantasy--in case you hadn't already guessed.) Why the restaurant itself is so trendy is even more unclear. The place looks rather like an upscale TGI Friday's and the connoisseurial judgments are limited to statements like "This is *so* good!" and "This is *really* good!"

An aging playboy, Will has more commitment to a Chilean sea bass than to any woman, until he meets the One For Him. She is Charolotte (Ryder), who meets him at the restaurant and is conned into being his date for a big society affair. One thing leads to another: They boff, he finds True Love, she reveals (and I'm giving nothing away here if you've seen the previews) that she is about to die from the Movie Disease. Now he must decide if he wants to Truly Commit; she must figure out if she has anything to do besides make little wire hats and prepare to be a good-looking corpse. He has a quickie at a party. She leaves. He repents. She comes back. He tries to save her life. She dies. He mourns. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets to have his cake and eat it too. Our President should have it so good.

Now there's nothing in this too-familiar formula that couldn't be packaged into a good old-fashioned four-hanky film, manipulative as it might be. But Gere and Ryder are like marionettes in different sideshows, manipulated by two different puppeters, all thumbs and dyslexic to boot. It's not just that this November-May romance puts their characters at odds with each other; it's that they seem to come from different dimensions as well.

It is also, for all its predictability, a very strange film in certain ways. [NOTE: SPOILERS MAY FOLLOW!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!]

Will, it seems, was once in love with Charlotte's mother, who died (from a Movie Accident) when the girl was very young, leaving her to be brought up by her grandmother (Elaine Strich, who now and then threatens to breathe some life into this thing). Granny is disturbed by the incestuous overtones of this relationship, but not to worry, she tells Will. Charlotte's not his daughter.  In the meantime, a young woman seems to be stalking Will, but she turns out to be his real daughter--abandoned along with her mother by Will some time ago. But mourning does not become this Electra, who has moved to New York with her husband (who may be Kevin Bacon, since he's invisble) and is about to have a child.

All of this has some very kinky overtones. Will commits to a dying woman who reminds him of a lost love and who will conveniently be dead quite soon. He is present at the birth of his grandchild (the father nowhere in sight). Charlotte, who has no daddy of her own, is in love with the man who might have been her daddy. His daughter gets to cuddle her new kiddie in the arms of her daddy. But none of these tantalizing angles ever get explored. They are dangled before us and snatched away, leaving us to chew on more cliches about Meaning and Commitment than you can find in a made-for-tv Lifetime Channel special.

Maybe it's because actress Joyce Chen is still fairly new at directing. Maybe it's because screenwriter Allison Burnett's previous credits include RED MEAT, BLEEDING HEARTS and BLOODFIST III (I am not making this up!). But with the depth of a crepe and the substance of a burnt souffle, AUTMUN IN NEW YORK is a gourmet's nightmare, and a film gourmand's gastristis.