ONE DIRECTION: THIS IS US (Morgan Spurlock). 90 minutes. Opens Friday (August 30). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NN
This Is Us, the latest behind-the-scenes pop tour doc, tells the story of five middle-class British kids and their catastrophic rise to fame in the manufactured band One Direction.
Straddling the line between blindly endorsing them and hanging the wide-eyed boys – now aged 19 to 21 – out to dry, Morgan Spurlock’s portrait exposes almost enough to make you wonder if he’s taking the piss.
On a fabricated-for-film camping trip, for example, Louis Tomlinson (or was it Liam Payne?) wonders what would have happened if just one of them hadn’t turned up for his X Factor audition (where Simon Cowell cleverly plucked them out and grouped them together). His conclusion, so earnest you could hug him, is that each lad is integral to 1D’s success.
Lead heartthrob Harry Styles is curiously quiet during these moments of self-adulation, as if he more than the others might be aware of their expiry date and interchangeability.
The boys’ resistance to choreographed dancing, combined with their often stiff performances, makes the film’s abundant same-same concert footage a snooze. The story’s complete dearth of conflict doesn’t help matters.
The only compelling moments involve the boys’ families and a question deserving its own documentary: can parents still parent when their children achieve fame and wealth way beyond their own?
Scenes like Zayn Malik’s mother calling to thank him for the house he bought her are sweet, but like the band itself, too contrived to appreciate.
