Spoonatects Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Jemima It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

eskovan1 You really can't have too high expectations for a made-for-cable TV movie. And made-for-VH1 at that. With that in mind, Hysteria: The Def Leppard Story was a decent little bio-film. Yes, its too short and sometimes plays fast & loose with the facts, but it gets its main point across pretty decently. Namely, that Def Leppard were always best friends first and a great rock band second.Although the film opens with Rick Allen's accident and then flashes back from there, it doesn't overly dwell on just the negative. It makes it clear that these were stand-up guys devoted equally to their friendship as to their music.And even though the actors were obviously chosen based on their strong physical resemblance to each band member, all of them give really strong performances. They all come across as real people, and not at all as mere hired lookalikes. And even though the role is severely limited, Anthony Michael Hall gets the gist of producer Mutt Lange's role (although they made him American when he's actually British).A few time-line errors: They show the band working on Pour Some Sugar on Me while Rick is in the hospital and before Mutt Lange rejoins them in the studio. In fact, Sugar was the last song on the Hysteria album to be written and it was in fact Lange who recognized it as a potential smash hit and insisted on its development & inclusion (even though they were already way behind schedule).Also the final concert scene where Rick plays live again for the first time, this was actually at an outdoor concert in Germany. But there actually were people grumbling about a "freak show" in reference to a one-armed drummer (not fans, but members of another band that was also playing that gig). It does also accurately portray that Allen performed without a hitch that day and was warmly welcomed back by the audience.The real members of Def Leppard themselves have gone on record saying that even though they had no input to it, overall, they were reasonably satisfied with this docudrama.

kweekes-1 What is it with the British posters on this forum? The scenes of "Sheffield" were shot in Montreal. That's in CANADA, not the US. I'm willing to bet most of the movie was shot in Canada. After all, it IS cheaper to shoot up there than say England. So to complain about how obviously "American" things are in the movie is just down to bad geography on the part of our cousins across the pond. Also, most of the Leps were portrayed by Irish (Steve Clark) or English (Joe, Rick Allen and Pete Willis) actors, so if the accents are shaky then maybe the British actors should have spoken up? That being said, this was a truly awful movie. Def Leppard was a good rock band in the 80s, but they were hardly that influential to warrant their own movie. Sure they faced a lot of bad luck, but who hasn't? Simply awful movie is my verdict.

Ron Broadfoot Being a Def Leppard fan since 1992, I found this movie to be quite entertaining. The actors who play Def Leppard do pretty well, and their accents are decent. The only beef I have is with the Sheffield scenes being shot in Montreal. Montreal makes a rather poor substitute for an English city. The cars and buses don't look English either, especially since the drivers' wheel is on the left side of the car! Having the film shot in Sheffield would have been much more convenient. That aside, Def Leppard fans should enjoy this movie. The actor who plays Joe Elliott has a good singing voice, especially when he sings "Ride Into The Sun" and "Bringing On The Heartbreak".If you live in Toronto, be sure to see them play live at the Molson Amphitheatre on August 15!

RMcGarity As it is said fiction is stranger than truth. Storytelling in of itself can not fully reflect actual reality. For one life is too unpredictable and stories must follow a chronological order and with consistencies of the characters and place in order to make sense to the audience. All we got to see of the characters was a general overview of who they were and that is to be expected in storytelling. In life everyone plays a certain role and storytelling emphasizes those roles in order to make sense of the events and find a logical way to come up to the events. And this is the basic rule of most films and books. We want to be able to read and understand a story, we want to follow it, and relate to the characters on some level. The story was a good story to tell and the film gave enough insight into the characters to follow the story through and allow viewers to better understand who they were, while briefly addressing the Terror Twins and the success of the albums. The importance was placed on the characters, which would explain why the wrong car was used for the accident to Steve not wearing jewelry alongside Phil after their black out incident to Joe not driving a fancy car. These objects played more as symbols to again, 'emphasize' the mindset of the characters. That is not to be denied.