INTERMINABLE MAEL-STORM

 

MOVIE
The Sparks Brothers
Director Edgar Wright
Review Ray Chan

As someone who spent his teens obsessed with the British glam rock era, this reviewer initially felt it would difficult to view this documentary without a touch of bias.
    After all, the US band Sparks – essentially the duo of brothers Ron and Russell Mael – was, while unheard of in their homeland, an absolute phenomenon in Pommieland and parts of Europe. 

    Among the group’s admirers have been a plethora of well-known musical artists and movie celebrities, including acclaimed director Edgar Wright, who loved the Maels so much that he devoted this feature to them. 

    The motives are honourable: you can't fault the the Englishman for trying stridently to correct the public perception that Sparks was not just a flash in the pan, but, in fact, an innovative, influential, respected pop duo that is still going strong. 

    Indeed, there's a clearly palpable excitement in the theatre room once the lights dim, with the audience settling itself for an enjoyable refresher course into the prolific output of a pioneering outfit which delved into electronic music well before the synthetic new wave movements of the 80s. 

    And yet. And yet. Unfortunately, it seems Wright has allowed his predeliction with the siblings and their work to get in the way of making a better, shorter film. 

    With unlimited access to the Sparks archives, Wright makes his case to the point of tedium, often going into way too much detail, even as we hear a formidable list of testimonials from the likes of Giorgio Moroder, Todd Rundgren, John Taylor and Nick Rhodes (Duran Duran), Beck, Flea, Patton Oswalt, Weird Al and Mike Myers. 

    At two hours and 20 minutes, the film starts to drag on at the halfway mark. The album-by-album retrospective (25 in all) is quite tiresome; by the time we get to the early 199Os, one really begins to feel the inordinate amount of time this is taking. 

    For a telling comparison, consider how in The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, director Frank Marshall was able to comprehensively cover a mammoth musical biography in a tight 107 minutes. 

    To make matters worse, Wright’s fawning ensures The Sparks Brothers lacks any critical perspective. 

    Not everything released was brilliant and, like everything anyone produces, there was certainly some garbage among the gold. But here, the absence of a dissenting voice or two – which would break up the monotony of the adulation – is conspicuous. 

    There are so many gems: Tips for Teens, No 1 In Heaven, This Town Ain't Big Enough, for example .... while the controversially-named Dick Around involves grand choral refrains that eclipse anything Freddie Mercury could dream up. But sadly, many of the songs are only played in snippets. New ears to the music would have little opportunity to work out whether they appreciate the melodies. 

    It seems The Sparks Brothers is a well-made prolonged love letter that is aimed more at existing fans than potential converts, and viewers who are not familiar with the band’s works may well not be awed by the sales pitch.

    It is likely to find more converts when it inevitably hits the streaming channels, where it can be comfortably consumed in two parts. 

#sparksbrothers #universal