Well, I finally got to see When We Were Beautiful at Hoyts Carousel in Perth tonight. Apparently their shipment of CDs and DVDs got stuck in customs (What the? "I'm sorry but you can't bring these CDs in..."?!) so if you bought a ticket with the album/documentary package, you had to write down your address and contact details for them to mail out later. It had to happen in Perth didn't it. :P
Anyway, onto the actual film. I did enjoy it but I don't know if it would be worth watching again. I may or may not ever do a full review (it's more or less been covered elsewhere) but here are some thoughts in point form...
- The black and white worked well.
- Sometimes Jon sounds so arrogant it's hilarious ("I'm a CEO of a major corporation, don't waste my time"). But I guess it's those traits that have made him the front man he is.
- Dave's little hint that the dictatorship of Jon does bother him slightly on occasion was probably one of the most refreshing parts of the doco.
- The anecdote about Richie and Tico running into each other when Richie was with a girl and Tico was with her mother had everyone in stitches... there could have been more stories like that.
- The footage of "Diamond Ring" was magic... Would have been cool to see "Stick To Your Guns" or something like that. Because it's those gems that make us cynical fans fall in love with the band all over again.
- The lack of Hugh was to be expected but considering Obie O'Brien got to speak for the cameras, one measly quote from the bassist would not have killed anyone.
- They tended to "talk around" stuff like Richie's downward spiral with the alcohol and drugs. If you weren't familiar with that story, you would have been pretty confused during the doco.
- The censorship of swear words was a bit irritating, because a chunk of sound (including any background noise) was simply removed whenever an F-bomb or whatever came up. It sounded really jerky, especially when Jon was talking about organising the free Central Park gig and seemed to say the F-word half a dozen times in a couple of sentences.
Overall, I think the documentary is too Jon-centric for the typical diehard Bon Jovi fan, but not accessible enough for casual or non-fans. Still, there's no harm in checking it out at least once.
I agree with your comments even though I liked the documentary enough to watch at least another two or three times.
ReplyDeleteI particularly liked you mentioning the fact that Obie gets to say a line or two whereas Hugh is left out. And I'd have liked to listen to "Stick to Your Guns" (just thinking of that songs gives me goose pimples because that song is so good).
"Sometimes Jon sounds so arrogant it's hilarious"
ReplyDeleteLol, you're so right. If I didn't love him so much I'd hate him.
I share the idea that the documentary is a little bit Jon-centric (especially for a Richie fan) but I'll watch it again as soon as Amazon sends my copy.
By the way, I just discovered your blog and it seems very interesing!
hey that's a cool review on the docu. as a diehard fan myself, it was great to see some of the intimacy surrounding the band, i.e. like you said about dave's feelings towards the 'dictatorship' but equally, as you said, more could have been said about richie and the drinking etc. it seemed as if it was only intimate when they wanted it to be but i guess you can't share everything. jon did sound pretty arrogant, but if you were doing as much work as he was having to do you'd probably wind up that way too! definitely irritated by the censorships, i guess its so they didn't have to put an 'explicit content' sticker on the cd. overall though i loved it :) and the blog looks great, check out mine at www.backwhenwewerebeautiful.blogspot.com :)
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