Basically, Not Fade Away is the saga of a 1960s teenager who plans to become a rock star, but slowly realizes he won’t. The movie is set mostly in the New York suburbs. So why does it open in South London, where two lads — you may know them as Mick and Keith — bond over imported blues LPs?
The answer is that writer-director David Chase, after working in TV for almost four decades, wants his first movie to be both sweeping and intimate, world historical as well as autobiographical. That ambition could have been as stirring as the film’s soundtrack, assembled with care by Springsteen guitarist Steven Van Zandt, once a cast member of Chase’s The Sopranos.
Alas, Not Fade Away is far less pungent than the period it attempts to evoke. The main story begins in 1964, as the dowdy American media introduce the new British rock. Working-class high-schooler Douglas (John Magaro) hears “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on the radio and is transformed. Even more stunning are The Rolling Stones — often heard, but never glimpsed again after that prologue. Their potency is undiminished by having to endure Hollywood Palace host Dean Martin’s mop-top jibes.
Douglas becomes a drummer and starts a group with several friends; they play Bo Diddley, Stones and Kinks covers at parties, where Douglas gazes longingly at Grace (Bella Heathcote), who may be too pretty for him, and is definitely too rich. A year later, college and longer hair have made Douglas cooler, and when he moves from drums to lead vocals, Grace notices. They begin a relationship that will survive several upsets, and perhaps all the way to the movie’s open-ended conclusion, somewhere in the vicinity of Hollywood and 1968.