If you love Jeff Buckley as I do, this movie will make you very angry. It was a very bad idea to begin with made worse by a horrible script, terrible casting, and the searing loss of a great artist made all the more unbearable by this mess.

To be the child of a widely celebrated celebrity has always been a role I've been quick to sympathize with. Unless you have the fortunate genetics of Liza Minnelli or Michael Douglas, who somehow managed to live up to their parents' statuses, a lifetime of comparison is an unavoidable fixture I'd expect to be hugely damaging to one's sense of self. How hard it must be for Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall's children, who never rose to that type of fame and have, as a response, endured years of prodding questions regarding their parents' personas, focus on their own achievements next to nothing. How hard it must be for someone like Colin Hanks, who has achieved respect in the industry but is nonetheless inevitably compared to his much worshipped father. There are worse cases, many of which have to do with neglectful parenting that I won't dwell too much upon - the private lives of stars, as sometimes compulsively captivating as they can be to read about, are none of my business, and, frankly, are not as worthy of attention as their work. But how rare it is to find an example of a parent-child torch passing in our media that actually matches in respectability. One of those exemplifications comes in the form of Tim and Jeff Buckley, two singer-songwriters whose critical and commercial praise was cut tragically short before either were old enough to be considered has-beens. Tim was a defining pop artist of the 1970s, his career ending with a heroin overdose in 1975 at the tender age of 28. Jeff, an inimitable alt-rock poster boy of the 1990s, accidentally drowned a few months short of his 31st birthday. Both, so admired and so acutely mythological, no longer seem to be of this Earth. With their names surrounded by a mist of legendary mystique, everything about them is rigorously romanticized, which maybe isn't such a bad thing if you love their music and don't want them to appear as beings made up of as much flesh and bone as you or me. But as someone who likes to move past a smokescreen of tragic perfection, I'm partial to the act of stripping away the trappings of idolization. 2013's "Greetings from Tim Buckley," a forgotten indie character study, is the kind of film that immediately appeals to me. Rather than take on the conventional format of a biopic, it takes fragments of non-fictional lives and finds the quintessence within them. Jumping back and forth between the existences of the father-son pair (we get to know Tim in 1966, the year of his son's birth, and we are introduced to Jeff in 1991, the year he became a star through a tribute concert), the film is a crisply blasé study of two public figures whose reputations are anything but blasé. Directed by Daniel Algrant, "Greetings from Tim Buckley's" inclination toward naturalism is both its best component and its biggest flaw. It refreshingly moves away from keeping Tim and Jeff's legacies intact, viewing Tim as a womanizing lost soul too unaware of his abilities to keep them sacred, and seeing Jeff as an idiosyncratic genius never quite able to recover from the always-present lore of his dad, whom he never met. As the film flips back and forth between the aforementioned periods of their lives (Tim is played by Ben Rosenfield, Jeff by Penn Badgley), a better sense of who these men were overcomes us. But because it's so rooted in realism, forgettability is also to be had, especially because Rosenfield's performance (and Tim's story in general) is not as intriguing as Badgley's: Badgley is so good that we nearly forget that he is not, in fact, Jeff Buckley. So maybe there's a reason why the film has been swept away over the years as a good but otherwise forgettable independent movie: while featuring a star-making performance from Badgley, nothing about it is urgent, and does not necessarily fixate on its central icons at their most cinematically interesting moments. Regardless, this is a sturdy revisionist biopic deserving of a look. Fans of the Buckleys will have a field day.

Woke up to it playing on foxtel got me hooked straight away being a fan of both musicians. Great performance from everyone. Loved it.

This small film focuses on Jeff Buckley being asked to come to New York to take part in a tribute show to his father Tim. Jeff never knew Tim nor liked him and the way he hovers around walking out provides the tension as he finally finds his voice and finally gets something from the father who ran away. The music actually played in the film is of great quality and although I would guess the film has/had little appeal outside of fans, it is actually very moving.

A mood poem of a film that captures some touching and thoughtful moments around the ideas of legacy, fatherhood, and artistic impulse.

The two lead performances are strong and of course the music is great, it just lacks a compelling story.

Complete Dud. A Tim Buckley/Jeff Buckley movie with numerous performances, yet no hint of "Morning Dew", Hallelujah", or "So Real". .. The three best songs of their combined careers. I guess the producers of this film didn't see financial justification in paying for the musical rights of any of these three songs to make a good movie out of this mess. Don't waste your time like I did.

I loved this movie. I think it's hard when people might be expecting a documentary - maybe they know some facts that aren't shown in the movie or are changed using artistic license. This isn't a bio-pic, it is a movie showing the struggle of how one man deals with a father he never really knew. It does that beautifully. And oh the music!! So worth it if only for that.

A wasted opportunity. The stories of Tim and Jeff Buckley are both tragic ones: massive talents cut short in their primes. Here was an opportunity to tell their stories in an interesting yet sensitive manner (and throw in some good music to boot!). The good music is certainly there, but the interesting story is not. This movie just seems to meander aimlessly, and end up not really making a point. Many scenes just seem like padding, not really developing the characters or plot and just taking up time. There is a degree of sensitivity, but maybe too much. It all just seems so pretentious and punch-pulling.

Non male alcune suggestioni, coraggiosa la scelta di mostrare un percorso psicologico senza praticamente usare i dialoghi e abbastanza credibile Penn Badgley nel ruolo di Jeff Buckley, ma per il resto questo film secondo me è un disastro, soprattutto per l'inconsistenza dello sviluppo narrativo ma anche per la riduzione un po' troppo banale e retorica del rapporto-non-rapporto padre figlio tra Tim e Jeff Buckley (che poi sarebbe il cuore del film).

Very good perf' by P. Badgley. Some nice moments. And of course, great music !

Not as good as I'd hoped considering how much I loved the book and the man himself.

★★★ (out of four) About a year ago I became a little obsessed with both the Buckley's. I had been a fan of Jeff for over a decade, but started getting into Tim's music. I read the joint biography "Dream Brother" and found it quite fascinating. The film "Greetings From Tim Buckley" does a pretty good job of capturing the feelings Jeff had for his father. His animosity and competitive struggle comes through and Penn Badgely gives a pretty good performance as Jeff. It's even more impressive when I learned he did his own singing for the role. The plot centers on the true event of the 1991 tribute concert that was arranged to honor the prolific singer/songerwriter from the 1960's - Tim Buckley. Tim died of a heroin overdose in 1975 and been vacant in his son Jeff's life. Jeff reluctantly agrees to perfom some of his Dad's songs, but he is torn between the opportunity for himself to shine as a musician and the disappointment he feels for the man he is to honor. It's a defining moment for Jeff. Of course everyone pretty much knows of the tragic drowning of Jeff just a few years later. [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v48/Zeppo1/TimBuckley_zpsdd7661e5.jpg[/IMG]

It isn't breaking a whole host of new ground, nor does it quite have the charm that Nowhere Boy had, but Greetings From Tim Buckley is an interesting, insightful movie into Jeff Buckley's early life being haunted by his fathers legacy.

Enjoyable film. Great music, great lead performance.

I found Penn Badgley's performance in this film lacking - Although his attempts at warbling like Jeff Buckley were commendable at times they were plain exhausting at others. This movie will not speak to a broad audience and for anyone who was ever intrigued by the ill fated mystery between the two Buckley men will find themselves trying to attach to the aura of silhouettes presented by the film but will feel undeniably let down through most of it. It does offer key moments that you can feel the affect of a lost relationship. However as a Jeff Buckley fan I found this whole movie far too aloof to capture the intensity behind the intrigue that drew the directors attention in the first place. Not to mention Penn Badgley's bug eyes drew me away from the character so badly that even his well mimicked movements were lost on me.

"The movie struggles to find its footing, lacking the dramatic tension to make it of much interest beyond the fan base of the supremely talented, tragically fated Buckleys."

Great music and a terrific performance by Penn Badgley are this unfocused, meandering movie's saving graces.

Though I found it often meandered, Penn Badgley's uncanny resemblance to the late Jeff Buckley (right down to his singing voice) deserves praise.

A slowly unfolding character drama that will most-likely not appeal to many movie-goers, Greetings from Tim Buckley is a film about a tribute concert performed in 1991 at St. Ann's Church in Brooklyn, NY, for folk-ish American musician Tim Buckley several years after his premature death at the age of 28 in 1975. A remarkable thing about Buckley's music is that it was ever-evolving and each of his albums showed an appreciation and influence of a different music styling (funk, jazz, soul, psychedelic rock etc). Buckley also never found a lot of mainstream, commercial success during his lifetime and the film hints upon that as the concert is given a decade and a half after his death. Tim is shown in flashback as the film mostly focuses upon his son, Jeff (Penn Badgley - "Gossip Girl", Easy A), who made his own "musical debut" at the concert paying tribute to a father he never knew (as him and his mother had more-less been abandoned by him). Badgely performs and sings all of his own music here ... and he is quite impressive. I have long-believed that Gossip Girl had some talented stars -- namely its two female leads Leighton Meester and Blake Lively. Greetings from Tim Buckley supports the idea that some of its male stars are also talented actors as Badgely's character struggles with coming to terms with abandonment while also appreciating and understanding an artist who made the tough decisions his father had made many years prior (as he is also making some of these at this same stage in his life). While preparing for the concert, Jeff bonds with Allie, a young lady (Imogen Poots - A Late Quartet, Jane Eyre) working at the event as she is a devotee of his father's music. Much of the film is musical and these moments are great although they lead to little development of character; but fortunately the film never bites off more than it can chew as it also gives enough time to Jeff to grasp his situation and surroundings and come to terms with his own demons brought about through music and a non-existent fatherly figure others worship. Knowing Jeff's own fate makes the film even more bittersweet. Buckley fans might rejoice with a Hallelujah over this small-ish film ... I think it gives us just enough to fully appreciate this other talent. The son ... although pretty-boy actor Badgley does deserve high praise and appreciation for this performance.