by Moe Zilla

Created on: January 29, 2008

"FM" is a great song by Steely Dan. But it's also a mediocre movie that never lived up to its soundtrack.

Released in the spring of 1978, the film was a blatant attempt to lure young moviegoers by promising music, comedy, and the glamour of the radio business. ("A Now Story With Now Music!" its posters promised.) It has very little plot, flashing from one disc jockey to the next and relying on their characters to sustain interest. The only real conflict is a tacked-on subplot about the on-air personalities rebelling against the new station owners. Eventually a crowd gathers in the street, and as the police arrive the radio announcers barricade themselves in the station to...play more music.

It's sad, because the soundtrack actually - a two-record set with over twenty songs - offered some of the best pop songs of the 1970s. The title track ("no static at all...") was written specifically for the film by Steely Dan, and track two is Bob Seger's classic "Night Moves." There's Boston, Foreigner, and even Billy Joel - and the movie wisely features the songs prominently, letting them lend a personality to montages of the otherwise uninteresting characters. It ultimately elevates these moments, making them even more meaningful than the movie's live performances by Tom Petty, REO Speedwagon, Linda Rondstadt and Jimmy Buffett. During a climactic showdown, Queen's anthem "We Will Rock You" is even sung by the mob at a protest rally.

There's no real rebellion here, since the disc jockeys are only trying to play mainstream pop - just more of it, with fewer commercials. Martin Mull appears in this movie as a compulsive womanizer, but the movie's PG rating guaranteed this joke would never go further than preliminary flirting had shots of closed doors. Eileen Brennan was supposed to add some drama as an aging hippie named "Mother" who's now considering giving up the radio life. There's the obligatory "imperial relationship" between the young program director and his girlfriend Laura. I've heard people say the plot is "light weight" or "laid back." I'd call it non-existent.

"FM" is a product of its time, when the boomer generation took its culture so seriously that they could see a crisis in whether a radio station increased the length of its commercial breaks. In that sense the movie is morbidly fascinating, if only as a reminder of how much more sophisticated audiences have become.

Learn more about this author, Moe Zilla.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.