Oscar Wilde was apparently an alien and many are willing to follow his footsteps. As the 60's end in Britain, the youth are either mod or rocker. Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) becomes a glam pop star in the 70's. He is taken with outrageous star Arthur Stuart (Christian Bale). Jerry Devine (Eddie Izzard) is his manager. Mandy (Toni Collette) is his wife and number one fan. He is a superstar until he is shot at his concert. His career suffers as it is revealed to be a publicity stunt. It's a decade later and New York reporter Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor) is assigned a retrospective of the incident. He happens to be a fan and was at the concert.

The movie lays out an intriguing event which could be used as its central mystery. Only it seems to get explained away and it fades into the distant. Instead, it becomes a muddle journey into a pop culture life. I thought the point is to get to Christian Bale and reveal something about the incident. It turns out to be a long road trip to a dead end. I do really like the actors and their performances. I like the world they create. The plot structure could function better.

Velvet Goldmine is a dazzling mixed up surreal glam rock version of Citizen Kane. It is also a mess with a central character that is too closely associated with David Bowie.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays Brian Slade. A Bowie lite rock star with fluid sexuality who faked his own assassination on stage. In essence this mirrors Bowie killing off Ziggy Stardust.

Slade lived a wild hedonistic lifestyle which included a collaboration and an affair with drugged out American rocker Curt Wild. He is played by Ewan McGregor who adds a dash of Iggy Pop.

Arthur Stuart (Christian Bale) is the former glam rock fan turned journalist who interviews Slade's family, friends and collaborators about his life and death a decade earlier.

Velvet Goldmine is too disjointed. Director Todd Haynes had budgetary issues. It is gloriously camp with nods to Oscar Wilde. It might be more fun watching while intoxicated but the coda is, later in life Bowie cleaned up his act when it came to substance abuse.

I first learned of Todd Haynes with the release of his 2002 drama "Far from Heaven", starring Julianne Moore as a 1950s housewife who develops a relationship with her African-American gardener after discovering her husband kissing a man. It turned out that Haynes had been making movies for some years by that point, including 1998's "Velvet Goldmine". This Academy Award-nominated spectacle is a look at the glam rock era, with Christian Bale as a reporter trying to find out what became of a glam star from the early '70s. This movie has it all: drug use, orgies, sexual fluidity, and everything else that was characteristic of the era.

It's not a masterpiece, but damned if the cast members don't put their all into the roles. I recommend it, but mind you, this is NOT a fluffy, "Almost Famous"-style look at '70s music; there are some shocking things here.