Tags: Billy Crudup | Cameron Crowe | Frances McDormand | Jason Lee | Kate Hudson | Patrick Fugit

Cameron Crowe wrote the book on teen rock and roll films. Which is to say, he wrote Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

So it should come as no surprise that after twenty years of honing both his craft and the genre, he is churning out gems with what looks like no effort at all.

Almost Famous is Crowe's quasi-autobiographical story of a precocious young rock journalist who falls under the guiding light of CREEM magazine's gadfly writer Lester Bangs before scoring it big with Rolling Stone, who sends him on a 1973 bus tour tour with a band called Stillwater.

Together with the sex and drugs and rock and roll, there are solid performances by Philip Seymore Hoffman, Zooey Deschanel and Michael Angarano - not Oscar stuff, but tight enough to due justice to a great script and genuinely moving story line.

Seeing Lester Bangs (Hoffman) rant against corporate rock is worth the price of admission alone, but there are plenty of indelible scenes in this film that mist the eyes for the simple reason that they ring poignantly, absolutely true.

Thinky says: From now on, all coming-of-age stories MUST take place in the early 1970s.