It took me longer than usual to get around to A Complete Unknown… mainly due to sleep problems over the holidays and never being awake for showings. But schedules are shifting and Saturday’s 10am showing synced with my schedule… that and chances I’m about to be snowed in for the rest of eternity are high.

And I probably shouldn’t have bothered since, news alert, I’m not that big a Dylan fan and am not concerned about the fate of folk music. The flick stars a performative Timmy C doing a Bobby D impersonation – including singing – starting in 1961 and going to some unspecified year since the flick gave up feeding us dates and historic events for some reason. Dylan gets some chicks, goes electric, pisses of folk music fans, and meets other popular music acts of the day.

I know and enjoy a generic pop culture level of Dylan’s music. I have nothing against him and his weird voice. But this musical biopic is full of his music, most of which I didn’t recognize and wasn’t sure if it was good or not. Which is a big problem since it’s so in love with every song they put on screen while I am not.

Plus there’s the little problem that Bob Dylan apparently lived a very uneventful. Unless you were a big folk music fan and hated when Dylan moved away from it. I, however, could not be compelled to care. Anyhow, what I mainly learned is that Dylan is kind of a dick, especially to his main squeeze(s). And credit to them for not pretending otherwise.

But that’s coming from a super casual Dylan listener who doesn’t have any thoughts or ill-will towards 60s folk music. To the extent I think about 60’s folk music, I largely never do. So hold me back as Dylan risks the purity of the art form. I’m sure this is a big deal, but I didn’t care.

Does Chalamet do a good job? Sure. Would I rather have watched a biopic of Joan Baez? Yes. Was Dylan a dick? Seems like it. And that’s the movie. It failed to make me care about Bob Dylan and the fate of folk music in America in the early 60s… and if it fails to do that, I’m not sure what’s left.

Score: 74