May I be so bold as to put one of the most annoying misconceptions in all of filmdom to rest…this movie is NOT about Janis Joplin. It is NOT based on Janis Joplin's life; it is NOT about a Janis Joplin-like character. The only similarity between the character Mary Rose Foster and Janis Joplin is that they were both female rock singers. The occupational hazard of drug and alcohol abuse is so ubiquitous in this genre that it can hardly be said to implicate Ms. Joplin as opposed to virtually any other female rock singer. Why no one says this movie is about Grace Slick, Stevie Nicks, or Joan Baez, I don't know, but it bears no more resemblance to Janis Joplin than it does to any of these other women. Bette Midler's "Rose" is truly an enormously talented woman, but she does not look, sound, dress, speak, act, sing or dance like Janis Joplin. Janis Joplin was not prone to getting into fights with people in public, stealing limousines, trespassing in steam baths, she was not from Florida, she was not asking to take a year off, she was not being manipulated by some evil Svengali manager, and she did not return to her home town to do one total blow out concert and subsequently drop dead on stage. I suppose it does not help that misinformed boobs like George Mair continue to perpetuate this nonsense in biographies of Ms. Midler, but no matter how frequently a fallacy is repeated or by how learned of an individual, it does not make it so. So to sum it up in plain English, THIS MOVIE IS NOT ABOUT JANIS JOPLIN.<br /><br />I think perhaps people are so eager to jump to this conclusion because without it, it is admittedly difficult to figure out exactly what this movie IS about. I'll leave that question to subsequent reviewers who care to dig beyond the surface cliché that this movie is about Janis Joplin, which I believe we have now clearly established, it is not. Would I recommend it? If you love Bette Midler, yes. If you're a fan of Janis Joplin, see the documentary "Janis" instead.