American Hot Wax

The early history of rock'n'roll seen through the eyes of its mentor, the New York disc jockey Alan Freed (played by McIntire), who was eventually run out of town as a payola scapegoat. With this subject, plus Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis (among others) in the cast, it seems hard to imagine any film going wrong. But American Hot Wax badly lacks a hard narrative core, and it makes no attempt to discipline its performers into an even approximate re-creation of their '50s acts. The result is an only occasionally moving ragbag, with a really disappointing final concert which conveys little of the raw energy of the period.