As Captain Beefheart once said about guitar solos, there are no mistakes, only interesting choices.
Director Gorman Bechard certainly made an interesting choice when he decided to present a two-hour-long documentary about the Replacements without including any of their music, instead opting for an endless series of interviews with fans, fellow travelers and music critics.
I was enough of a Replacements fan to buy most of their records as they came out. I thought they were a good band with flashes of greatness, but with an insecurity that prevented them from fully realizing their musical ideas. So, I can fill in the missing music from memory. Anyone who has heard OF the Replacements but never heard their records would be well advised to listen to the music first, or this movie won't make a lot of sense.
Having said that, I found the interviews to be revealing (although some are oddly framed, with subjects looking off-screen) and I enjoyed watching the film. I did pause it several times to play some Replacements songs in appropriate places.
There's a self-congratulatory and exclusionary tone to this documentary that bothered me more and more as I watched. Mr. Bechard may feel that he was making a sophisticated artistic choice by excluding music and archival footage (and I admit, many music docs rely far too heavily on these elements). But at the same time, he's saying that only old fans of this cult band are cool enough to watch. And that's very alien to the spirit of the Replacements, a band of misfits who turned to music because they weren't good enough to hang with the cool kids.
Director Gorman Bechard certainly made an interesting choice when he decided to present a two-hour-long documentary about the Replacements without including any of their music, instead opting for an endless series of interviews with fans, fellow travelers and music critics.
I was enough of a Replacements fan to buy most of their records as they came out. I thought they were a good band with flashes of greatness, but with an insecurity that prevented them from fully realizing their musical ideas. So, I can fill in the missing music from memory. Anyone who has heard OF the Replacements but never heard their records would be well advised to listen to the music first, or this movie won't make a lot of sense.
Having said that, I found the interviews to be revealing (although some are oddly framed, with subjects looking off-screen) and I enjoyed watching the film. I did pause it several times to play some Replacements songs in appropriate places.
There's a self-congratulatory and exclusionary tone to this documentary that bothered me more and more as I watched. Mr. Bechard may feel that he was making a sophisticated artistic choice by excluding music and archival footage (and I admit, many music docs rely far too heavily on these elements). But at the same time, he's saying that only old fans of this cult band are cool enough to watch. And that's very alien to the spirit of the Replacements, a band of misfits who turned to music because they weren't good enough to hang with the cool kids.