Date sent:      	Mon, 8 Apr 2002 23:00:30 -0400
From:           	"Mike N. Reinemann" <reinemann@wanadoo.nl>

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/news2001/july01/july16/5_fri/news4friday.html

VH1's 'Hysteria,'
glam rock sans roll
July 20, 2001

Def Leppard biopic is a story not worth repeating

By Andrew Wallenstein

    When the time comes for my inevitable run for President of the United 
States, there's one skeleton in the closet I won't be able to explain. As 
a teenager, I experimented with hair metal.

    No, hair metal isn't some street drug you never heard about. It's a 
genre of music popular in the late 1980s also known as glam rock, lipstick 
metal or, as it's more commonly known in retrospect, crap.

    Screeching electric guitars were played by grown men wearing more makeup 
than Tammy Faye Bakker, not to mention enough hair spray in their bleached 
tresses to knock a hole in the ozone layer.

    This forgettable era came back to me with the force of an LSD flashback 
after watching "Hysteria: The Def Leppard Story" (Wednesday, 9-11 p.m. ET, 
began July 18th), VH1's original movie chronicling the rise of one of the 
genre's best-known bands. 

    "Hysteria" was the name of their most popular album, which went 10 
times platinum and 10,000 times into the cassette decks of assorted cars 
I've driven.

    By any measure, VH1 made a curious choice in devoting an entire film 
to Def Leppard, which we learn was purposely misspelled because the name 
looked cool that way (I always thought the excess peroxide seeped into 
their brains). 

    Of all the bands featured in "Behind the Music," their story isn't that 
compelling and their place in music history is nonexistent.

    Although their drinking and drugging were among the most legendary of 
the glam rock bands, surely Motley Crue was even wilder, making them a 
better representative of the genre.

    But "Hysteria" takes its subjects seriously, and that would be more 
difficult to do with a band that wore lipstick and leather.

    Def Leppard's fashion choices always seemed more restrained in 
comparison: jeans that looked as if they were caught in a lawnmower and 
the British flag emblazoned on T-shirts and shorts tight enough to give 
the Queen Mum hot flashes.

    The real reason VH1 chose Def Leppard is revealed in the opening scene 
of "Hysteria."

    Driving a sports car, high on drugs, drummer Rick Allen (Tat Whalley) 
crashes and flips the vehicle over more times than Greg Louganis off the 
high board. His left arm is torn from his torso, creating something of a 
Zen conundrum: What's the sound of one arm drumming?

    The horrifying accident frames the story of Def Leppard, a band driven 
to succeed in its desperation to escape its industrial hometown of 
Sheffield, England. Preferring playing heavy metal to lifting it, they 
practice hard until they catch the eye of master producer Mutt Lange 
(Anthony Michael Hall), who launches the band into the orbit of 
international stardom.

    But this being VH1, there's no rise without a fall: In addition to 
Allen's grisly crash, there are departing band members, raging egos, angry 
girlfriends and other obstacles to contend with. 

    The entire band also happen to be full-time alcoholics, which leaves 
"Hysteria" a boring blur of close-up shots of open mouths alternating 
between bottles and microphones.

    Viewers would also have to drink excessively in order to see the 
resemblance between the actors and their real-life counterparts, which is 
nonexistent. The garbled British accents are nicely replicated, though, and 
without the subtitles often needed to comprehend Def Leppard in interviews.

    It's also nice to see former teen star Hall still working. He's revived 
his career nicely by playing real people in cable biopics (Whitey Ford in 
HBO's "61" and Bill Gates in TNT's "Pirates of Silicon Valley"), but it 
would be really great if a movie producer had the guts to give him comedic 
roles similar to those he excelled in 20 years ago in "Sixteen Candles" and 
"Weird Science."

    As for "Hysteria," the film is no match for the Def Leppard episode of 
"Behind the Music," which makes this effort unnecessary overkill. 

    Still, I had to pop in the album after the movie ended, which is really 
what VH1 intended anyway.  

© 2001 Media Life 

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-Andrew Wallenstein is the television critic for Media Life.