| Review |
Girls of a certain age will surely swoon over this IMAX presentation of a concert by the currently-popular boys' bubblegum band, but in all honesty "*NSYNC Bigger Than Live: The Concert Film" isn't particularly innovative apart from its bigscreen format and the exceptionally vibrant sound system that goes along with it. (Indeed, the picture's so loud that you might come out of it checking to see if your ears are bleeding.) There's no backstage stuff of the sort that made last year's "Barenaked in America" fairly revealing; "Bigger Than Live" has good camerawork and editing, but essentially it just offers a potted version of one of the group's live performances, although in an admittedly state-of-the-art form.
As to the content, there's really not much to say. To this viewer-listener, all the songs sound pretty much alike, with conventionally thumping rhythms and lyrics that rarely achieve simple clarity, let alone memorability. The five singers look like relatively harmless lads (only two of them are beginning to seem a bit seedy--I can't tell you which since I'm not able to differentiate among them), and they prance around in routines that probably took a good deal of time to master and surely demand lots of energy over the course of a couple hours. The fellows harmonize well enough, but given the strenuous gyrations they continually engage in, it's hard to believe that they shouldn't be renamed LIPSYNC; can they really be vocalizing while jumping around so exhaustingly? Their poses, especially at the end of individual numbers, have a certain narcissistic quality, but the steps themselves appear to be benign enough (even if the biggest applause of the evening comes when they briefly pat their fannies, eliciting lots of screams and shrieks). And, if you can believe the guys' occasional words to the audience, they're well-spoken and appreciative of all the adoration. At least they make absolutely no pretense about playing any instruments; they represent a step beyond The Monkees in this respect.
There are some bothersome points, though. Why, at the beginning of the performance, does the backdrop run--rather like the old news announcements on the front of the Radio City Music Hall-- quotations from fans attesting to their frenzied love of individual members of the group? The effect seems not only patronizing but self-glorifying, hardly consistent with the guys' feigned humility. And a bit in which a platform carries the group out over the audience is terribly hokey.
There is one way in which even a largely disinterested viewer can profitably occupy himself while watching "*NSYNC," though: instead of trying to figure out when one of the cookie-cutter songs ends and another begins, just count up the number of costume changes the fellows indulge in over the course of the program instead. The result will probably exceed the number of singers and backup band members combined. |
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