Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Jakoba True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Cosmoeticadotcom Pretension runs all through director Peter Clifton's 137 minute long, 1976 quasi-documentary on Led Zeppelin and a series of three concert performances at Madison Square Garden, in New York City, during July of 1973, called The Song Remains The Same. Aside from the concert footage, the film weaves assorted silly fantasy sections into the film, as well as footage of backstage goings on, such as security guards beating rowdy fans, the theft of $203,000 from the band's safe deposit box at the hotel they were staying at, and band manager Peter Grant's bullying of various Garden personnel over matters trivial and not, among others. The film was not the first attempt at a true 'rockumentary,' but it was the first rockumentary to try and add extraneous fictive material so the whole could be seen as a work of art, apart and above the actual music. Prior to The Song Remains The Same such films, like Michael Wadleigh's 1970 documentary Woodstock, on the famed 1969 rock festival, were basically strictly journalistic endeavors or attempts at cinema veritè. Not so with this film. And that's its fatal flaw.While the music, and even the band's lapses into self-indulgence, are great, the film's cinematic pretensions bring the whole effort down into a barely passable cinematic mediocrity. In a sense, parts of the film play out almost like a precursor to Rob Reiner's seminal 1984 'mockumentary' classic This Is Spinal Tap. Numerous shots where the band is actually 'live' in concert are mixed in with scenes of them on stages at Shepperton Studios that do not resemble their American venues, and numerous other little alterations had to be made. The film would have been so much better had they simply filmed the concerts, then did the fantasy sequences and combined them, rather than the time and money wasting rigmarole that ensued.Unlike the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night, which received overwhelmingly positive reviews for a bad film, The Song Remains The Same, a merely mediocre film, was almost routinely savagely attacked from Day One, mainly for the fantasy sequences. That said, like the Beatles film, the Led Zeppelin film did well at the box office. Unlike A Hard Day's Night, though, The Song Remains The Same was, indeed, a highly influential film. Almost all concert films and rockumentaries that have come since have this film's DNA stamped on it, for the good or the ill. And, unlike the Beatles film, this film's improvs are restricted to the musical stage, where Plant and Page were masters of that art form.

jimmygeekrock What can you say about this flick? Zeppelin are the undisputed kings of hard rock and heavy metal (despite what Black Sabbath fans might claim). They make it all look effortless.SONG captures them in all their hedonistic glory, swaggering their way through their greatest hits. In seventies tradition, everyone receives a ridiculously long solo...and these can be painful to sit through. Do we really need a 15 minute drum solo, for instance? Granted, John Bonham may be rock's greatest drummer (all apologies to Keith Moon) but enough is enough.There are also the dream sequences to deal with. While I'd like to think they were committed to celluloid on a lark, their presence gives the production a ridiculous overtone. These might have been cool in the seventies, before the days of music video, but they just look dated and nonsensical today.Forget these minor quibbles, however, and enjoy the concert footage. This is grand stuff, the type you don't see anymore. These guys were the real deal!

ShootingShark A concert film of Led Zeppelin performing on their Houses Of The Holy tour at New York's Madison Square Gardens in 1973, mixed with documentary footage of the band and some fantasy sequences.It's probably fair to say that Gimme Shelter and Woodstock were the original rock concert movies and there were others in the late sixties/early seventies, but this one really set the standard. Unlike so much music footage from the time the concert photography is crisp and clear, and relatively free from stoned-out jiggering. More importantly however, the idea of expanding the film into a hyrbid fantasy/documentary was highly original, as opposed to a narrative story with music (Help, Head, Two Hundred Motels). Some bands' music suits pure theatre performance (Stop Making Sense), but Zeppelin's doomy, epic, heavy blues-rock plays nicely against the imaginative sequences, notably Plant's warrior-quest antics in The Song Remains The Same/Rain Song and Page's creepy reconstruction of the Four Symbols tarot Hermit in Dazed And Confused, as well as larger-than-life manager Grant's gangster antics. It doesn't quite invent the music video (I think Tommy did that) but a strong case could be made. The real treat in this film though is Page's incredible playing; all four members are stunning musicians, but like all great artists he's off in a world by himself, soloing away, eyes closed, feeling the music through some impossible conduit in his brain. Plant's where-is-he-under-all-that-hair frontman charisma and incredibly powerful voice push the songs to incredible emotional depths, especially on tracks like No Quarter and the quintessential rock classic, Stairway To Heaven. The movie is exhilarating but also draining, like being wrung through a mangle - Dazed And Confused, with an extended guitar solo in the middle, lasts a sweat-soaked twenty-nine minutes alone, and there are only ten numbers in a two-and-a-quarter hour movie (work out the maths). The footage of the band members at home is also a real treat for fans, although the shots of Plant with his son Karac - who tragically died from an intestinal infection at the age of seven - are heartbreaking. A classic concert movie, this demands to be watched with a good print and sound system - the Warner Brothers DVD release sound mix is excellent; accept no substitutes.

MARIO GAUCI Despite having been a fan of Led Zeppelin (owning all of their studio albums on CD) for the past 13 years and having had this film on VHS for years, it is only now on the occasion of Robert Plant's concert in Malta that I decided to give it a spin. Its somewhat maligned reputation and substantial length is mainly what kept me away for so long but, now that I've seen it, while certainly not the best rock concert movie, it is not worthless either. The band's stage performance itself (filmed at the Madison Square Garden) was generally held as being subpar and rumor has it that, for a time, they tried to block this film's release but, again, I'd say their live act is, at the very least, above-average.The movie takes its name from the opening track on the band's then-current 1973 album, "Houses Of The Holy" which I myself found disappointing at first and decidedly anti-climactic after their majestic untitled fourth album…but I eventually warmed up to the album on subsequent listens. The film contains 10 songs from their first 5 albums – including the band's signature tunes "Whole Lotta Love" and "Stairway To Heaven" and an overblown nearly half-hour rendition of "Dazed And Confused"! – which is occasionally accompanied by fantasy footage of the band members in mythical attire; I'm not too sure what the idea behind this was but the effect is more distracting than inspiring and, in any case, the best fantasy sequence is at the film's very start with their late drummer John Bonham and their bear-like manager Peter Grant dressed up as mobsters and taking out a rival clan in their hide-out in an outrageously bloody fashion! P.S. I can't post this review without making a few comments on the Robert Plant concert I attended later on: the 59-year old Plant, understandably no longer the bare-chested Adonis of THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME, took to the stage at around 22:40 and proceeded for the next 90 minutes to belt out several tracks from his latest acclaimed solo album, "Mighty Rearranger", a surprising cover of Love's "7 And 7 Is" and, naturally, a handful of Led Zeppelin classics which, tinged with his now-trademark World Music rhythms were all but unrecognizable at first! Curiously enough, he did not elect to sing the band's anthem, "Stairway To Heaven", or any songs off of my favorite Led Zeppelin record, the 1975 double-album "Physical Graffiti". Having been preceded by a mini-performance by John Bonham's sister Deborah (who was quite impressive herself, in a Janis Joplin-way), I was half-expecting Plant to duet with her on one of my favorite Led Zeppelin tunes, "The Battle Of Evermore" but, alas, this did not come to pass, either. Amusingly, an hour into the performance, Plant stunned the audience with an abrupt "Goodbye Malta" after which he and his backing band quit the stage…only to return a couple of moments later for an encore consisting of among others "Whole Lotta Love" which really brought the house down. Finally, an unexpected personal thrill I had during the concert was getting to meet, indirectly, John Bonham's mother – who was there to support her daughter and, despite being in her late seventies (I guess), could be seen to mildly headbang and sway to the music all through her set!!