The Sparks Brothers is a fan’s love letter. As the tagline helpfully summarises, it is a documentary about “your favourite band’s favourite band.”
Virtually everybody who appears on camera in The Sparks Brothers appears to rave about the eponymous siblings, Russ and Ron Mael, whose career has spanned more than half a century. There is a lot of joy and enthusiasm on display, even within fairly standard talking head sequences. Mike Myers takes a moment to playfully joke about how carefully the documentary team is getting is mole in focus, while the only character who has anything particularly negative or dismissive of the band is an animated Neil Tennant in a recollection from one of the band’s long-term associates.
An interesting framing…
This makes sense. The Sparks Brothers is a documentary from director Edgar Wright, a self-acknowledged fan of the band. Wright is careful never to crowd out or overwhelm his subjects, but he also takes advantage of his position as director to indulge his own fannish enthusiasm for the unlikely pop group. The Sparks Brothers is a surprisingly long documentary, running to two hours and twenty minutes. At least part of this is down to the fact that Wright takes great care to ensure that absolutely everybody gets a chance to have their say on what makes this “unusual duo from the seventies” such a monument
The Sparks Brothers is indulgent to a fault, but it’s also enthusiastic and excited. The energy of the assembled panel radiates through the screen, giving the documentary an infectious joie de vivre. The result is perhaps a little overlong and a little hagiological, but it is carried by a genuine sense of overdue celebration.
Oh, brother!
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: brothers, documentary, edgar wright, film, Movie, non-review review, review, ron mael, russ mael, sparks, the sparks brothers | 2 Comments »
