Stoned (2006) Critic Reviews

Its title may ring with pun and promise, but Stoned is a flat riff on Jones's short life. You'll get the highlights but no sense of what made him special -- or what really haunted him.Read the full review

Thorogood allegedly confessed on his deathbed (in 1993) that he killed Jones, and while the movie convinces us that this might have happened, it never truly reveals who Brian Jones was before he fell apart. His indulgence, and his demise, play out in a void.Read the full review

Apart from Considine, the actors all deliver superficial performances beneath several layers of slathered-on Summer Of Love drag, and Woolley's use of multiple film stocks and flash-cut editing jumbles together a bunch of '60s filmmaking clichés without putting them to any particular use.Read the full review

Fans of the band will likely be disappointed (its music is represented by a handful of covers), and younger audiences will wonder what the fuss is about.Read the full review

Stoned accomplishes the unlikely feat of making the golden years before medical science and the law caught up with rock culture look dull.Read the full review

The film's sputtering dramatic engine, underwhelming perfs, and absence of music by the Stones themselves may leave the key younger demographic wondering what all the fuss is about.Read the full review

All the pieces are in place for an incisive tale of Brit-pop ego and madness, but filmmaker Stephen Woolley -- a celebrated UK producer ("The Crying Game") making his directing debut -- lets the story get away from him.Read the full review

Glaringly lacking in the film are any original Stones songs. The group, who fired Jones just before his death, must not have thought much of the movie if they didn't allow their music to be used. Smart fellows.Read the full review

A disappointingly dreary affair.Read the full review