This is an excellent documentary about an influential, although relatively unknown, band. My husband and I were fortunate enough to see it at a one-night-only showing at an Atlanta rock club. Wayne Kramer, the MC5's guitarist, originally said it was a "wonderful film" and John Sinclair, the band's one-time manager, said Thomas had done "a fine job". However, in April 2004, Kramer sued the producer and director of the film (Laurel Legler and David C. Thomas, respectively) alleging that Legler and Thomas had promised he would be the film's music producer. Legler and Thomas denied this but distribution of the film ended and plans for a DVD release were canceled. In March 2007, the court ruled in favor of Legler and Thomas and the Court of Appeals upheld the decision. Even so, as of June 2010, MC5* A True Testimonial has not been released on DVD.

No, this is NOT a rock'n'roll spoof. I had never heard of MC5 before, so I wasn't sure if this film was for real, or whether I had another potentially great rock satire on my hands. At least 80% of this documentary could easily pass off as a mockumentary: there are loads of sophomoric rock, hippie, and 60s-politics clichés that should have you shaking your head in disbelief. "It really WAS this bad?..." I've been listening to metal and hardcore for over 20 years: MC5 aren't the granddads of anything. Their music is simplistic hard rock of the dullest kind. Their infantile lives are incomparably more interesting than their dated riffs.Wayne, perhaps the most puerile living band member, muses what "MC5" might stand for. How about Moron Club 5? Mongoloid Children 5? Minimalist Cretins 5? These guys make Manowar look like nuclear physicists. They make Spinal Tap seem like a real band.This rockumentary should serve as a dire warning just what being a hippie and smoking weed all day can do to you. There isn't a single brain cell in the entire "cast" of real-life characters. Real-life! (Shocking but true.) Already at the start, Wayne displays some rather juvenile modes of thinking when he raves about his shoddy Detroit as if it were the center of the universe. I'd even understand if he were 15, but this guy is pushing 60! The others happily join in later, but if MC5 and Eminem are Detroit's best exports, then I've got to wonder what kind of polluted factory air this unappealing city is providing for its pity-worthy inhabitants. Later on, Dennis the drummer also gets rather hyper about Detroit and everything else connected with the band, until his face reddens and his head nearly explodes. Was he showing rehab symptoms or is he genuinely mad? Usually a decadent 60s or 70s band has 1 out of its 4 or 5 members dead. We find out right from the start that no less than TWO MC5'ers have already been long-dead. Rob, the first one to meet his maker, looks like a bloated, geeky accountant with a bird's-nest stuck onto his empty head - but I guess hippies could get away with these kinds of silly-looking, unconvincing frontmen. Did women really swoon when they saw this fatso on stage? Or were they just so high on drugs that they pretty much hallucinated anything they wanted... From what I could gather, Rob is the dumbest MC, which is a feat in itself. There isn't much interview footage of him, but whenever he appeared I was convinced I was watching a semi-retarded person. Sonic Fred isn't much better. Both of them have some rather stupid ex-wives/widows; these two are like the middle-aged female versions of Beavis & Butthead (minus the cussing). Talk about the computer-like efficiency those hippie communes had in brainwashing their members! To make things even worse, Fred eventually married Patti Smith, a quasi-female, after the band split up. Being married to that mustached, talent-free, pseudo-punk piece of grotesquerie would have driven anyone to an early grave.Yet, it's not just the band members and their groupies-turned-wives that provide the fun. Take a look at this Tim-Leary-like charlatanic hippie guru, John Sinclair, who took these clueless, barely educated five morons under his smelly wing. He rants on about "the pigs", the "Fascist Establishment" EXACTLY the way one expects it from a true hippie caricature. Sinclair, like any other sect leader, needed to find hordes of idiots; apparently, 60s Detroit was a fertile ground. He is a walking stereotype, to the extent that he almost seems scripted, unreal. He is the embodiment - like no other person that appears here - of everything that was wrong with the 60s political "student" movement. (Those Kremlin psychopaths must have been rubbing their hands in delight, laughing all the way to Vietnam...) 30 years later, and this demented, hypocritical, self-centered, egomaniacal "flower child" looks like a cross between Leon Trotsky and Il Duce from the Mentors, complete with a recently acquired speech impediment that perhaps resulted from falling asleep with a bomb in his mouth, on some sleepy, potentially deadly Detroit day in the early 70s... He was married to one of those sociopathic West German (wannabe?) terrorists; that pretty much completes the picture... Sinclair is so confused that he mourns the deaths of John and Bobby Kennedy, seemingly unaware of the fact that it was the Democrats who were "the Establishment" when the Vietnam War started! So Sinclair is anti-Vietnam-war, yet he supports those who sent the first troops there?? Hippie logic can be rather mystifying.Or how about this Crawford character. These sublimely gullible five buffoons even had a "spiritual adviser"; Crawford would come on stage, and in true Al Sharpton fashion deliver idiotic "motivational" (in reality hate-mongering) speeches that probably served as a mere warm-up for his later career (?) as a TV evangelist.I bust a gut laughing when I heard about the White Panthers! Wayne, the deluded ex-junkie that he is, talked about "continuing the work of the Black Panthers" - as if the blatant fact that BP were anti-white had never entered his tiny, chaotic, confused head. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in the BPs calling the WPs "psychedelic clowns", which to my knowledge is the first and last time that the BPs were right about anything.Over 30 years have passed since his beloved non-Revolution (more like a well-off kids' Whiners Collective), yet Dennis the drummer still screams "Freedom!" at the top of his lungs - and that's just during interviews. What does he do when is alone? (Again: just say "no" to dem da drugs...) Later on, he gets so frustrated with a question he isn't able to answer, that he draws a gun and mock-shoots the interviewer. So much for "peace and flowers"; there is plenty of gun-waving going on here.

Forget the fact that this documentary has your typical "rock band" story arc: friends start band, band gets big, band takes drugs, band declines artistically, band breaks-up, 30 years later band fondly recalls the fun times and laments the bad.Forget the fact that this movie painstakingly recounts those heady days of revolution, street riots, and domestic political oppression.Forget the fact that this movie makes us believe that the MC5 is just as relevant today as they were 30 plus years ago.Forget the fact that you get to meet such timeless characters as Wayne Kramer, Fred "Sonic" Smith, Rob Tyner, John Sinclair and the White Panther Party, among many many others.Forget the fact that you'll get to see this band live in concert, the Grande Ballroom in its glory, and the battle for Michigan Avenue.Forget all the that because the reason you will want to see this great documentary is because the music just kills!! We are talking almost 2 hours of pure MC5 MF'en jam kickin' folks.A true testimonial indeed!

This documentary, made over a period of eight years, tells the remarkable story of an extremely influential rock'n'roll band. Starting from their mid-60's garage band roots (sounding amazingly like the Sonics), the Motor City 5 deveoped into an icon for a brand of loud, crushing music reflecting their industrial roots. Even if you don't care for their music (and you're bound to like even a few of their songs), their story is fascinating. It combines 60's protest, youthful braggadocio, and a style of music that would help carry one to the likes of Iggy and the Stooges (not to mention certain aspects of punk rock). This film is clearly a labor of love, combining extraordinarily rare live shows, still shots, a nearly-continuous backdrop of MC5 tunes, penetrating interviews with the remaining members and their spouses, and even FBI surveillance shots. It's the ultimate testimonial to a band that only gains in stature as time goes on.