We finally got around to seeing Walk the Line last night, which I found to be mostly flat (albeit despite the best efforts of Reese Witherspoon). I don't think the AV Club was far off the mark when they characterized it as "another one of those life-of-an-entertainer films that reduces an artist to his most embarrassing moments." But the performance scenes-- especially the opening sequence-- were exhilarating! This got me thinking-- even in bad musician biopics, the music scenes tend to be filmed with a verve that the rest of the film doesn't match. Beyond the Sea was (in my opinion) a disastrous mess, but whenever Kevin Spacey is singing, it's mesmerizing; one of my favorite scenes in recent history is a New Year's Eve private party performance in the Temptations TV movie, which doesn't come close to greatness in most of the rest of its running time. Does anyone else find this to be true? Why does the excitement rarely seem to spill over into the narrative?

-Coop