Great Film overall

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

This movie has everything. Suspense, love, great music.

This movie evokes strange feelings of going back down a road, I have been on before, but did not recall ever being on it.This was one of those movies I watched on cable during the eighties without noticing much. I would only watch it, if I had nothing else to do.That said, I was amazed how much I remembered from this movie, when I watched it again recently. Probably because this movie has a lot going for it, that I never considered. It is a good story, with some mystery that compels one into the story. The movie has a good sound track and made an interesting point that good musicians feel tortured when trying to express themselves musically.

I was 15 when this movie was released, and I LOVED IT. Eddie and the Cruisers is one of those AWESOME movies. I remember partying to it and watching at least 100+ times. It is a movie the seems to describe a lot of what was going on in the 80's even though it was supposed to be set in the 60's. Eddie was a music "ICON" for us, John John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band were awesome, and the music still lives on today. As a child of the "80's" a Gen."X" child, we are called the Lost Generation and Eddie was also lost,and showed how a lot of us felt, just disappear... Again, if you haven't seen this movie, you really NEED to. It is truly a Classic 80's movie. Also, watch garage sales, flea markets, thrift stores. You can sometimes find the Soundtrack which is also awesome. My Ex-husband recently found it in a box a friend gave him, and the first time he listened to "The Dark Side" it took him back again..

Plot in a nutshell: Eddie Wilson (Michael Pare) was the lead singer of "Eddie & The Cruisers", an on the rise rock band in the early 1960s that played late 1970s/1980s style music. They cut one successful album, "Tender Years", which featured the hit song "On The Dark Side", and it looked as though Eddie (and his band) had overnight fame & fortune almost within his grasp, but Eddie could not see beyond his own arrogance to recognize and accept the fact that if he wanted to be in the spotlight, he would have to play by certain rules, and at times could mistreat his band mates, even lyricist/piano player Frank "Word Man" Ridgeway (Tom Berenger). Following the death of their original sax player and the rejection of their 2nd album, "A Season In Hell", rejected because the style of music was dismissed as little more than "weird noises", Eddie apparently committed suicide, driving his car off the bay docks... but since his body was never found, an urban legend formed around him. Years later, in the early 1980s, Eddie's music has experienced a resurgence in popularity & appreciation when his old record label re-releases the Tender Years album, and a debate is sparked as to what happened to the lost performance tapes and recordings of the "Season in Hell" album. Then someone starts ransacking former band members homes in a desperate search for those tapes... could it be Eddie? In the midst of this, more about the band's tragic downfall comes to light.Major Spoiler: at the end we see the older, long lost Eddie Wilson alone in the streets watching as his lost music is played on a big store TV; he smiles serenely, proud to know that his work, misunderstood and rejected all those years ago, is finally being heard, and disappears into the night.All in all, a well made, well acted film that speaks for all those rock singers who almost had it but for whatever reason couldn't hold on. Michael Pare (in the role that should have made him a star) is well cast as Eddie Wilson, the charismatic but self-destructive rock singer, though the true star is Tom Berenger as the lyricist who must uncover the truth of it all.Excellent showcase for the music of John Cafferty (Eddie's singing voice) and the Beaver Brown Band.