Motley Crue rock biopic: a tale of success, excess and ants

Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll: a new movie about the antics of 1980s metal hellraisers Motley Crue, a band known as much for their hedonism as their music, has it all.

“The Dirt”, based on the band’s best-selling autobiography, charts the rise of four Californian youngsters who channel the punk rage of the 1970s into the big-haired rock genre that, for many people, defined the 1980s.

Like the hugely successful Queen movie “Bohemian Rhapsody”, it is a rags-to-riches tale of flamboyant showbiz glory and the perils of a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.

“I think that’s what’s exciting for people about the Queen movie: there’s a band who wrote their own music, they were their own personalities and they lived their life the way they lived their life,” Motley Crue founder Nikki Sixx told Reuters.

“It’s the same for Motley Crue.”

The film begins with a neglected young Sixx being taken into care after cutting his own arm and blaming it on his drunkard mother – setting up a theme of self-abuse that runs through a story where Jack Daniels flows like water and anything sniffable goes up the musicians’ noses.

A stand-out scene is when Motley Crue are touring with Ozzy Osbourne who, when he discovers they have no spare cocaine to give him, crouches down and snorts a line of live ants from the floor.

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