KATY PERRY: PART OF ME (Dan Cutforth, Jane Lipsitz). 97 minutes. Opens tonight (Thursday, July 5). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NN
For all Katy Perry’s talk about sharing herself and her “weirdness” with her adoring fans, the glassy-eyed pop star reveals little in this banal doc, which follows a year in her life during her first world-wide concert tour.
As she conquers city after city and tweets upbeat messages to her fans, she tries to keep her marriage to comic Russell Brand alive. We know how that one ends, right? In the film’s tensest moment, the perky songstress, after getting news about Brand she doesn’t share, begins weeping uncontrollably minutes before she’s set to sing in Brazil. Will the show go on?
Copious concert footage here and in other cities shows the candy-coloured, fairy tale universe she or her marketers have constructed. We never get a clue about why she relates to this faux fantasy or what it’s feeding in her fans. Certainly, it’s worlds removed from her earlier life and music. Her parents were Pentecostal ministers, and the young, ambitious and clearly talented singer cut a disc of gospel songs and angst-ridden Avril Lavigne knockoffs before breaking through with her I Kissed A Girl single.
An interview with Brand would have added edge to the earnest proceedings. Statements from Perry herself (“Follow your dreams!”) and her sycophantic handlers are so clichéd, they seem culled from a Christopher Guest mockumentary.
And even though the singer’s stylist/hair guy is around, there’s no mention of how the retro Bettie Page look contributed to her image.
