Focus Features
It’s always an interesting thing to analyze the art that celebrities/artists are fans of, because sometimes they are not at all what you’d expect. Just because a Tarantino sings the praises of Joker or a Del Toro recommends a hundred movies you’ve never heard of doesn’t mean either is right. Sure, sometimes it’s about obscure stuff, but other times it’s simply something you barely care about — and they sure care about convincing you.
The Sparks Brothers is a documentary from director Edgar Wright and covers essentially the entirety of the career of the band ‘Sparks’ which is still is active today. The band is actually led by two brothers, Ron and Russell Mael, originally from Southern California. Russell is the lead singer, known for his extreme vocal range, often dipping very high while Ron plays the keyboards, known for his odd mustaches and deadpan gazes into the camera.
Of course I say ‘known’ but personally I had never heard of them until I found out that ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic wrote a song parody about the band called ‘Virus Alert’ from his 2006 album . But I can’t say I was particularly interested in learning more about them, nor was I necessarily interested in watching a documentary about them — but the lure of Edgar Wright as a director was enough to pique my interest.
It’s still a documentary though, so it doesn’t really seem as innovative as many of Edgar Wright’s other movies. You get mostly interviews in black and white, sometimes with funny descriptors, a lot of video and even more photos of events in the past, many generic stock videos to color the circumstances, and occasionally some fun little cartoons as we hear a voice over tell a tale. Those were the most interesting parts of the movie, although I can understand why that sort of thing couldn’t be the whole movie.
We see a parade of folks tell us both the actual history of the decades long band and their twenty-five quirky albums and clever song lyrics. Some of these are the people involved, but we also see the likes of Beck, Flea, and even briefly ‘Weird Al’ himself talking about how innovative the band was. And sure, it does seem like Sparks directly influenced many more famous bands, even if they were never as successful in the US as they were overseas.
Then there are the celebrities praising the duo: expected nerdy types like Patton Oswalt and Fred Armisen, and those that you aren’t surprised by like Neil Gaiman and Jason Schwartzman (who gets a lot of screen time oddly), and then the weird surprises like Mike Myers. I mean, okay, although I‘m not sure why hearing Mike Myers praise the band really changes anything for me.
There isn’t much of a point nor a message to this movie except the simple one of: ‘Hey, this band Sparks you haven’t heard of? They’re great and you should listen to all 300 or so of their songs.’ This message did not work on me but the movie is still entertaining, at least for a band documentary. It’s not particularly clever nor innovative, it certainly is way too comprehensive and long, and it isn’t something that will necessarily appeal to Edgar Wright fans. But I still found it a fun time, and the two Mael brothers are fun interviewees, maybe more so than some of the random celebrities that showed up to kiss their behinds — probably because the brothers aren’t actually taking themselves seriously.
The Sparks Brothers has a run time of 2 hours 20 minutes and is rated R for language.
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