Definition of from bad to worse: Jimmy is a roadie. Who’s unemployed. And moves back in with his mom. In Queens.
With a fringe of blond hair and huge sideburns, the ever-engaging Ron Eldard is top-notch as this woebegone rock hanger-on, a former employee of Blue Oyster Cult — “They’re nice Long Island boys,” he tells his ma, who thinks he’s “a rock star butler.”
Dumped without ceremony in Michigan, he makes his way back home, where he discovers that Mom (Lois Smith) preserved his boyhood bedroom in every detail, right down to the posters of guitar gods. Meanwhile, he accidentally reconnects with people he knew as a kid, including a former frenemy (a funny Bobby Cannavale), whose teasing goads Jimmy into exaggerating his career success, and his wife, a barroom singer (Jill Hennessy) in need of a showbiz breakthrough. She and Jimmy used to date.
Soulfully directed by Michael Cuesta (“L.I.E.”), “Roadie” is short on narrative momentum, but it’s a perfectly attuned character study of this rock relic and his middle-aged sorrows.