40
The film's sputtering dramatic engine, underwhelming perfs, and absence of music by the Stones themselves may leave the key younger demographic wondering what all the fuss is about.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
40
This UK drama by Stephen Woolley, a longtime producer for Neil Jordan making his directing debut, presents a fairly convincing version of what might have happened.
30
Village Voice by Jessica Winter
The rock hero starts out dead and so does the movie.
50
Despite good performances from Gregory, Considine and especially David Morrissey, the movie's true merits are all on the surface: its uncannily authentic period reconstruction and its successful use of stressed and textured film stocks. The filmmakers care more about this than about their characters, and it's hard for us not to feel the same.
42
Apart from Considine, the actors all deliver superficial performances beneath several layers of slathered-on Summer Of Love drag, and Woolley's use of multiple film stocks and flash-cut editing jumbles together a bunch of '60s filmmaking clichés without putting them to any particular use.
30
The Hollywood Reporter by Michael Rechtshaffen
A disappointingly dreary affair.
63
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
It's a depressing story made even more of a downer by the absence of any Stones-performed music from their prime '60s years.
50
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
Thorogood allegedly confessed on his deathbed (in 1993) that he killed Jones, and while the movie convinces us that this might have happened, it never truly reveals who Brian Jones was before he fell apart. His indulgence, and his demise, play out in a void.
25
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
Could 1960s-style sex, drugs and rock & roll really have been this dull?