A gangly, unruly tale that attempts to spin the success stories of Kiss, Donna Summer and record industry executive Neil Bogart into one confounding narrative, "Spinning Gold" is a tangled mess of a movie, a tribute act masquerading as the real deal.
It's a fanciful tale that is gassed up on its own would-be whimsy, a movie where the narrator himself can't stop talking about what an unbelievable story he's telling. And frankly, it is unbelievable — not because of the stories being told, which are the stuff of record industry legend, but because of the amateur execution of the filmmaking, which constantly creates a distance between storyteller and story.
Broadway vet Jeremy Jordan ("Rock of Ages") plays Bogart, a blue-collar kid from Brooklyn who went on to head up Casablanca Records, the 1970s indie label that eventually came to be home to some of the decade's biggest superstars. Emphasis on eventually, because their success came slowly, and the label bled millions of dollars before finally striking it rich.
