One part visual sophistication to five parts faux-naive juvenilia, Garage Days is director Alex Proyas' (The Crow) fairly awful attempt to get back to his Australian roots. Proyas started in the film business by making music videos and this part-comedic, part-dramatic look at one struggling band trying to make it big has a flashiness to it one associates with rock videos. Unfortunately, it also has about as much depth.

A born optimist, singer-guitarist Freddy (Kick Gurry) dreams (literally) about achieving rock stardom. Together with his bass-player girlfriend Tanya (Pia Miranda), druggie drummer Lucy (Chris Sadrinna) and quiet lead guitarist Joe (Brett Stiller), Freddy is constantly looking for the one break that will lead to national fame. Unfortunately, the band's manager Bruno is one guitar string short of set, and potential gigs just keep going awry. Enter the craven, coke-stoked Shad Kern (Marton Csokas), manager extraordinaire, who might just be able to help. That is, of course, if the band's internecine struggles with relationships, drugs and psychosis don't rip them apart first.

The film is a curious amalgam of oppositions. On the one hand it tries for a Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland-like "Let's put on a show!" innocence that it completely undercuts with two "Fun with drugs" episodes (so labelled by intertitles) that seem like outtakes from Requiem for a Dream. It feels like these two sections are Proyas' raison d'etre for making the film-sure, they are visually striking and inventive, and they give Proyas a chance to flex his cinematic muscles, but they are also completely at odds with the tone of the rest of the movie.

The same can be said for the music. Whereas the film is set in the here and now, the soundtrack is made up of, for the most part, 80s college radio staples like The Cure, The Violent Femmes, Bowie, The Jam and Roxie Music, something that might be explained by the fact that Proyas was born in 1963. Although this former college deejay enjoyed hearing some old favourites, I couldn't help but wonder what the hell they had to do with a young AC-DC-influenced band trying to make it in Sydney-one of the coolest cities in the world-circa 2002. Garage Days makes it obvious that the great garage-band movie is still waiting to be made.