Tommy

Ok if you havent seen the Who's Rock Musical you have a sheltered Life. It may be corny at times it has good meaning for its age. Do we all know the songs.It is on Crackle

Tommy (Roger Daltrey) is a "deaf, dumb and blind kid" who retreats into himself after the death of his father. His mother, Nora (Ann-Margret), and stepfather Frank (Oliver Reed) take him to see a specialist (Jack Nicholson) but Tommy is apparently a hopeless case. That is, until Tommy discovers that "he sure plays a mean

pinball." Tommy gains fame when he defeats the Pinball Wizard (Elton John) for the world championship. As a result, Tommy becomes such a celebrity that he even founds his own religious cult. But his fans begin to commercialize his fame, while Tommy wants to stick to the straight and narrow. When Tommy wants to end the commercialization of his message, his supporters accuse him of being hypocritical and turn on him. Ann-Margret, with a slinky red dress slit way up the side, was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, losing out to Louise Fletcher in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

NY Times Review

Tommy (1975)

Film::'Tommy,' The Who's Rock Saga

By VINCENT CANBY

Published: March 20, 1975

Ken Russell makes movies the way another man might design a ride through a funhouse. He deals in headlong but harmless plunges from giddy heights, abrupt changes of pace, joke turns, anachronistic visual effects, ghouls that pop out of the dark, all accompanied by sound of a force to loosen one's most firmly rooted back teeth.
The method is spectacular but it has seemed wickedly foolish in movies like "The Music Lovers" (about Tchaikovsky), "The Savage Messiah" (about Gaudier-Brzeska) and "The Devils" (an adaptation of Huxley's "The Devils of Loudun"). Now at long last the man and his method have found a nearly perfect match in subject matter, "Tommy," The Who's rock opera written by guitarist-composer Pete Townshend.
"Tommy" can take being fiddled with, and Mr. Russell's "Tommy" virtually explodes with excitement on the screen. A lot of it is not quite the profound social commentary it pretends to be, but that's beside the point of the fun. "Tommy," which opened yesterday at the Ziegfeld Theater, is mad, funny, irreverent, passionately overproduced, very very loud and full of the kind of magnificent physical energy that usually wrecks a movie by calling attention to performance.
"Tommy" is a solemn tale that must not be taken too seriously. It's an elaborate put-on about the terrible victimization of a small boy who is traumatized deaf, dumb and blind when he sees his stepfather murder his real father. Young Tommy then goes on to become the pinball champ of the world and, eventually, after he miraculously regains his senses, the new messiah who preaches salvation through pinball playing.
Mr. Russell's style, which had the effect of literalizing the artistic impulse in "The Music Lovers" and "The Savage Messiah," seems to liberate Mr. Townshend's rock score and lyrics, which are sometimes in embarrassingly dead earnest.
"Tommy" is composed of excesses. Bad jokes or heavy-handed satire are redeemed by everyone—director, production designer, orchestrators, actors—going too far, which is, after all, what the original "Tommy" is all about: a world inhabited by people too jaded to react to anything but overdoses.
The performers are extravagantly fine, particularly Ann-Margret who, as Tommy's mother, ages 20 years in the course of the film (largely through the increased application of blue eye shadow) and sings and dances as if the fate of Western civilization depended upon it. She is tough, vulgar, witty and game. The Who's lead singer, Roger Daltrey, plays the grown-up Tommy with a drive that matches Ann-Margret's while successfully simulating show biz innocence. Oliver Reed is, correctly, almost a cartoon as the opportunistic stepdad. He also sings quite nicely.
The movie, which has the structure of a vaudeville show, is laced together with specialty bits, some of which are simply jokes (Jack Nicholson playing a vacuous Harley Street medical specialist) and some of which are production numbers as riveting as rock can be at its best. These include a sequence in which Tina Turner shows up as The Acid Queen who attempts to cure the catatonic Tommy, and others with Elton John, as the Pinball Wizard defeated by Tommy, and Eric Clapton, as the Preacher who presides over a Lourdes-like shrine devoted to the healing powers of St. Marilyn (Monroe).
As I said, it's all fairly excessive and far from subtle, but in this case good taste would have been wildly inappropriate and a fearful drag.

The Cast
TOMMY, directed by Ken Russell; screenplay by Mr. Russell, inspired by the rock opera by Pete Townshend; additional musical material by John Entwistle and Keith Moon; produced by Robert Sligwood and Mr. Russell; executive producers, Beryl Vertue and Christopher Slamp; music director, Mr. Townshend; directors of photography, Dick Bush and Ronnie Taylor; editor, Stuart Baird; distributed by Columbia Pictures. Running time: 110 minutes. At the Ziegfeld Theater, 54th Street west of the Avenue of the Americas. This film has been rated PG.
Nora Walker . . . . . Ann-Margret
Frank Hobbs . . . . . Oliver Reed
Tommy . . . . . Roger Daltrey
Pinball Wizard . . . . . Elton John
Preacher . . . . . Eric Clapton
Uncle Ernie . . . . . Keith Moon
Specialist . . . . . Jack Nicholson
Group-Capt. Walker . . . . . Robert Powell
Cousin Kevin . . . . . Paul Nicholas
Acid Queen . . . . . Tina Turner
Young Tommy . . . . . Barry Winch
Priest . . . . . Arthur Brown
Sally Simpson . . . . . Victoria Russel
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