I thought Jenna Fischer was overmatched in the role. If she and Kristen Wiig (who I thought had the best handle of the entire cast on the tone needed) had switched roles, I think it would have been much better. I love Jenna to death on The Office, but she wasn't very good here.

The movie didn't seem to want to go for a full-out Airplane!/Scary Movie style assualt of over the top jokes, but there were some, and I thought they were jarring. The Jewish record execs, the cutting of bodies in half, and a couple of other things didn't mesh with the more low-key and subtle tone of most of the movie. I think the filmakers were going for the feel of "All You Need Is Cash" (the Rutles film); if so, the over the top gags didn't fit in.

Repeating a bad joke doesn't make it funny. The "wrong kid died", sink-smashing, and drugs-in-the-bathroom jokes were just leaden, and they kept coming again and again.

I was thrilled to see John Micheal Higgins as the Sam Phillips-type character (perfect casting, he resembles him quite a bit), but the rest of that scene fell flat. He says they have 15 seconds to record, and then they gab on about something for longer than that? I get that the band picking up immediately on the complicated lyrics of the song was a joke, but I couldn't help but wonder if I was supposed to think that they had rehearsed beforehand.

I have never found Tim Meadows to be funny in anything I have seen him in, and he wasn't here.

Why is Frankie Muniz as Buddy Holly supposed to be funny? It's just strange ... Holly wasn't short, he died at age 22 but I never thought he looked particularly baby-faced, in fact he seemed older than his years in the few clips that exist of him. Can someone explain the joke to me?

Seeing Jack Black as Paul McCartney was just painful, especially since Paul Rudd and Jason Schwartzman were terrific as John and Ringo (Justin Long as George was good, but those two were fantastic). Now I get that Black doesn't resemble McCartney, and that's certainly part of the joke, but since he didn't really sound like Paul either, and in fact his Liverpool accent came and went, I didn't know exactly what to think. Maybe if he had just played it as Jack Black it would have worked better.

Bobby Shad and the Bad Men were an actual early 70s studio group that specialized in quasi-easy listening versions of rock hits. That this was used for a group name in the movie bugged me (OK, I know that only one out of 1,000 people or fewer would know this). Kind of like using Stillwater (another real 70s group) as the name of the band in Almost Famous, which bugged me too.

Where did the violent lovemaking between Fischer and Reilly come from? Is that a reference to some other movie? It came out of left field and I found it puzzling. Also, why did Dewey suddenly have a washboard-abs torso? If this was a reference to something else, I didn't see it, and it didn't make sense on its own.

The movie poster is one of the worst ideasI have ever seen. I get that it's the takeoff of a Jim Morrison photo, and I found it somewhat amusing, but what is this supposed to mean to 18 to 34 year old target viewers? They probably think it's just a goofy looking skinny guy. Do they even know who the Doors and Morrison are, and do they know that specific photo? Maybe if they had had Dewey Cox pose in some other iconic ways (like maybe Bowie in Pin Ups, for example) that might have been a better joke, but it's still depending on your audience to know music history to get it.

There was no reason for this movie to be rated R. The orgy scene didn't have any jokes (including the penis joke) that were worth giving up a PG-13 rating. The swearing didn't add anything either. I am the furthest thing from a prude (love the 70s Richard Pryor albums, you can't get much more profane than those) but I felt like the nudity and language were gratuitous. As someone else said, this had the feel of an extended SNL sketch so maybe I was expecting a TV level of content.