The musician biopic no one asked for is here- from his humble beginnings fuckin’ around in the Bronx and Yonkers all the way to present day where he shambles about in a seemingly permanent reanimated corpse of a Golden Girl cosplay, this is the definitive story of Steven Tyler.
We begin with the bog standard “getting the band together” as Aerosmith is formed after a fateful and cursed meeting between Tyler and future bandmates Joe Perry and that other guy at a concert in New Hampshire, moving to Boston and writing a couple decent songs in the 70s, complete with the quick edits and scuzzy lighting to represent the era and its copious heroin and cocaine use.
There’s the “dark period” where the band’s drug use gets out of control, the stereotypical motorcycle accident waylaying Tyler from recording and touring in the early 80s, members leaving to pursue solo projects, everything you’d expect, only about a person you hopefully haven’t thought about in decades, before he and Aerosmith achieved even more fame reunited and reinvigorated in the late 80s and early 90s befouling radio waves and MTV to the chagrin of Gen Xers everywhere. Landmark appearances on SNL and the Simpsons are featured, so many scarves are tied to microphone stands, and the audio track has more “Yaaaaaa! shabba dabba doo doo baa baa doobie doo dahs” than any human ear should have to endure.
The film trails off in the third act much like Tyler himself, with a few minor peaks and valleys as he is dragged into rehab and then out again to pop up on American Idol or some shit, looking more and more like the zombie from Hocus Pocus as time goes on, until it just sort of ends. Austin Butler reunites with Baz Luhrman and some collagen to portray Tyler and his lips across his career.
