Benda Bilili!
0.5/4
Rated PG-13 for Some Drug Material
This movie is so bad that one might assume that the directors were trying to kill the aspirations of the Congolese music group, Staff Benda Bilili. This is documentary filmmaking of such ineptitude that I am in awe. The only thing that goes right is the music.
Filmmaking is storytelling. Even documentaries have a strong narrative thread propelling the audience from beginning to end. So while a movie like "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" may be factual and exhaustively researched, it still charts the rise and fall of the notorious company. It contains an arc and shows in detail what happened and why. You'd think such an idea would be obvious. Apparently the thought never occurred to Renaud Barret and Florent de La Tullaye, the two nitwits who directed this dreck.
Staff Benda Bilili was a band of parapalegic musicians formed on the streets of Kinshasa. They used materials and instruments they found and practiced in the zoo. They were spotted by Vincent Kenis, a record producer from Belgium who specializes in Congolese music. He got them to record a debut album. The album became a hit in Europe, leading to tours all over the world.
You'd think I learned this from the film. You'd be wrong. I got it from a Wikipedia article. The movie is virtually empty of any information about the band or its members. In fact, for a movie that allegedly focuses on the band, only about 40% of the running time is devoted to them. The rest is clips of life in Kinshasa. I understand that this stuff is important to set the stage, but come on! Details should not overwhelm your subject.
I learned almost nothing about the band members, except that it took two years to create the first album because of a lack of funds, and Roger is a street kid who plays a one string instrument he made himself. That's it. No one else is even named. How they formed and why is glossed over or unexplained. The list goes on and on.
The only scene that works is the concert in France at the end. It's adequately filmed, but the music is good and has a bit of energy. I bought the albums. The same cannot be said about the film, even if it was for a penny on Amazon Prime Day.
Rated PG-13 for Some Drug Material
This movie is so bad that one might assume that the directors were trying to kill the aspirations of the Congolese music group, Staff Benda Bilili. This is documentary filmmaking of such ineptitude that I am in awe. The only thing that goes right is the music.
Filmmaking is storytelling. Even documentaries have a strong narrative thread propelling the audience from beginning to end. So while a movie like "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" may be factual and exhaustively researched, it still charts the rise and fall of the notorious company. It contains an arc and shows in detail what happened and why. You'd think such an idea would be obvious. Apparently the thought never occurred to Renaud Barret and Florent de La Tullaye, the two nitwits who directed this dreck.
Staff Benda Bilili was a band of parapalegic musicians formed on the streets of Kinshasa. They used materials and instruments they found and practiced in the zoo. They were spotted by Vincent Kenis, a record producer from Belgium who specializes in Congolese music. He got them to record a debut album. The album became a hit in Europe, leading to tours all over the world.
You'd think I learned this from the film. You'd be wrong. I got it from a Wikipedia article. The movie is virtually empty of any information about the band or its members. In fact, for a movie that allegedly focuses on the band, only about 40% of the running time is devoted to them. The rest is clips of life in Kinshasa. I understand that this stuff is important to set the stage, but come on! Details should not overwhelm your subject.
I learned almost nothing about the band members, except that it took two years to create the first album because of a lack of funds, and Roger is a street kid who plays a one string instrument he made himself. That's it. No one else is even named. How they formed and why is glossed over or unexplained. The list goes on and on.
The only scene that works is the concert in France at the end. It's adequately filmed, but the music is good and has a bit of energy. I bought the albums. The same cannot be said about the film, even if it was for a penny on Amazon Prime Day.
what an utterly foolish and terrible review. You claim the documentary has no narrative? How wrong you are. You are most definitely a man who has never even touched a musical instrument. You may listen to bullshit bands such as Maroon 5 and Imagine Dragons and think "oh hey, anyone can do this" without recognizing the privileges they have had.
ReplyDeleteDude how could you not be touched by a person playing an instrument better than you can with whatever means they have possible. Blah blah blah you say a documentary needs some kind of narrative to be good. Foolish man. A documentary succeeds when it captures the soul of the subject, which this one does. You think showing the town they are from is pointless? My friend, you understand nothing about music.
You say this movie is all about the band, but it's really about their hometown. Can't you see the people in the movie talk about their home before they talk about themselves? No, you don't. You only review movies in your limited scope. You don't even know what makes a good movie.
You always whine about movies not having a plot, but you don't realize every movie has a plot, whether you can accept it or not. Your views on cinema are so narrow, it is embarrassing. I feel like you don't even know what a good movie is.