Back in the late 1990s, I became interested in Iranian cinema through some great films like Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry and Majid Majidi's Children of Heaven. I started to explore further, and to date I have seen nearly 50 films from that intrepid country. As much as I love them, I will admit one thing: they're mostly about children and/or poetic realism, and they are not for people looking for a good "B" movie fix. Until now, that is: Bahman Ghobadi's No One Knows About Persian Cats opens in limited release this week, and it may be the first Iranian "B" movie.

It's a rock 'n' roll movie, specifically an "assemble the band" movie like The Blues Brothers, but it has the rambling, slapdash quality of something like A Hard Day's Night, including some welcome humor. It uses the many-band format of films like The Girl Can't Help It or 9 Songs, wherein the characters travel all over town to see various bands perform. But ultimately, it strikes me as something of an Iranian version of The Harder They Come, with a bit of a political jab.

The story has singing duo Negar Shaghaghi (who sounds a bit like Charlyne Yi from Paper Heart) and Ashkan Koshanejad deciding to play some concerts in London and going about getting their passports and visas, as well as assembling a backing band. It is recommended also that they find more female backing vocalists, since the authorities frown upon solo female singers. The group has also written some English-language music, which is also frowned upon. In fact, just about all the bands in the movie are forced to practice and perform in secret spaces to avoid getting arrested.

Helping them out is the fast-talking Nader (Hamed Behdad), who knows all the underground musicians and can get all the black market documents they need, "no problem." Though our heroes are looking for specific musicians, Nader takes them all over Tehran on his motorbike to hear samples of several different genres (from folk to rap), even if nothing comes of it. Thankfully, the music is all really interesting and very exciting, even if the plot threads that connect it are not. Director Ghobadi sometimes throws in some MTV music video-like footage for the songs, which is sometimes powerful and sometimes cheesy. I want the soundtrack!

If the movie seems more urgent and underground than other Iranian movies, it's probably because Ghobadi (who also made A Time for Drunken Horses, Marooned in Iraq and Turtles Can Fly) probably has no interest in getting it past the censors and releasing the film in its home country. According to Variety, Ghobadi has expressed interest in emigrating and no longer dealing with the strict censorship of Iran. Even more interestingly, the movie's co-screenwriter Roxana Saberi is an American-born journalist who was arrested in Iran in early 2009. It seems as if all of these people were deliberately sneaking around and trying to get something past the authorities with their new film. Now that's rock 'n' roll.