Review by John Rain
Stars David Byrne, Lily Baldwin, Layla Childs
UK cert 12A | UK RRP £16.99 | BD Region ABC | Runtime 87 minutes | Directed by Patrick Keller
Concert films can be tricky things. There are some that give you more than the music and leave you spellbound by the mix of visuals and music (The Last Waltz springs to mind) and then there are ones that tend to bore you with over pretentiousness. Ride, Rise, Roar is the latter.
The film is immediately summed up by the opening sequence. A superb live version of Once in a Lifetime ruined by annoying and pretentious dancers prancing around the stage like performing arts students who have just learned that the student bar has put the price of drinks down to £1 a pint.
We are then treated to footage of Byrne and his band (and those tossing dancers) sitting around looking like they are shooting a Calvin Klein commercial. When we are shown footage of the dancers next jumping around with horific smiles on their faces, you immediately realise that we are no longer in the realm of a rock and roll concert film, but some sort of horrible mish-mash of blandly performed music and baffling dance.
Long gone it seems is the ability of film to truly capture the spirit of the live music experience. I am afraid that this can only be filed under portentous and pretentious. As a concert film it is nothing special and hardly dazzles. There is no doubting that Byrne himself is a fantastic, albeit odd, stage presence and he has a fine canon of songs with which to wow audiences. However, it is very distracting to have the cast from Fame smiling the music into vapid obscurity.
The last time Byrne annoyed people this much was when Windows forced you to listen to him when you installed Windows Media Player. At least on that occassion you didn't have to try and install it with the Children of the Damned cartwheeling around your room. These dancers are the equivilant of the Microsoft Paperclip.
Did I mention I didn't like the dancers?
EXTRAS None