One
Direction: This is Us (PG) 95 mins *
Pain
& Gain (15) 129 mins ***
There was some surprise when Morgan Spurlock was
chosen to helm the One Direction documentary. Spurlock, you’ll recall, was the
filmmaker whose McDonalds-drubbing 2004 hit Super
Size Me railed against the unthinking consumption of corporate product.
Might This Is Us feature a graphic sequence in which the director vomits
upon repeated exposure to “What Makes You Beautiful”? Would we witness his
cerebellum turning to mush after revisiting old X Factors? Alas, no: Spurlock remains off-camera throughout, his
participation negated the instant Simon Cowell’s Syco Entertainment logo
appears. This is, resolutely, a producer’s film.
Boybands remain profitable yet unsustainable
business models – looks fade, as surely as tastes mature – and 1D’s moment may
perhaps be nearing its end. All the pocket money in the land couldn’t get the
hubris-laden “Best Song Ever” higher than no.2; young Louis Tomlinson has
hedged career bets by signing with Doncaster Rovers. The film leaves the boys
sitting round a campfire, pondering – like moptopped Alexander the Greats –
what remains to be achieved now they’ve conquered the planet. Issued in the
summer’s dog days, This is Us might
be approached as one final pump of the fanbase before it returns to school and
wises up.
As a music doc, Spurlock’s film is even less sincere
than 2011’s Justin Bieber: Never SayNever; its candid moments are comprised of what TV execs refer to as
“constructed reality” and the rest of us know as untruths. (Why would One Direction be in
the woods?) It is, nevertheless, instructive of how pop culture now regards the
construction of a narrative as more important than the product; hook the
punters on the journey, and the music becomes secondary. In the concert
footage, the energy spikes with a cover of Wheatus’s “Teenage Dirtbag”, which
displays a craft and feeling lacking from everything else emitted on the band’s
behalf.
The biography is one-note: these boys are forever “normal
lads”. Harry, sightseeing in sunglasses, resembles a Poundland Dylan; brooding
Zayn retreats with his felt-tips in a moment of purest Spinal Tap. A giddy
hanger-on, Spurlock swallows this rags-to-riches narrative whole, recruiting
doctors to claim 1D’s music makes you happier (how reassuring to learn Simon
Cowell has scientists on his payroll), and a cameoing Martin Scorsese in a bid
for cross-cultural cred. Yet the triumph This
is Us commemorates isn’t creative, but banally commercial: that these talent
show runners-up should have achieved a greater market share than, say, The
Wanted.
Of course, this teenbeat tale dates back to the
Beatles. But its allowance-grabbing reach has never appeared more aggressive
than here in 3D, and I’d argue there’s a world of difference between the
innocent pleasures of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and the sinister mindlabbery of
“Little Things” (“You’ve never loved your stomach or your thighs/But I’ll love
them endlessly”), with its laser-honed methods of monetising low self-esteem.
Cowell has become very rich by being very shrewd about such matters; while
there’s no need to lock up your daughters, I see no harm in teaching them to be
a shade more discerning.
The critical reputation of Michael Bay – the Transformers movies’ leerer-in-chief – may now be beyond all repair, but he’s
attempting something original with Pain & Gain, the kind of tonally
batty one-off only someone who’s made the studios a lot of money might get away
with. This is the confounding true story of Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg), a
dim-bulb gym bunny who, in the mid-1990s, unwittingly initiated a bloody trail
of chaos that began with a get-rich-quick scheme and ended in multiple
homicides. The zigzag plotting is partly attributable to steroidal jags, but
events get so
incredible that, shortly after Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is observed tossing
severed human hands on a barbeque, an on-screen addendum seeks to remind us
“this is still a true story”.
Bay’s early action movies displayed a cocksure
humour, but his new film is more subversive, routinely undermining its alpha
males, and presenting all-American beefcake as ultimately good for naught. One
caveat: Bay’s blunderbuss comic touch, which tends to blast any subtler satire into
brash, cartoonish caricature. For once, though, the camera’s obsession with
hardbodies, and its grossed-out responses to unwaxed crotches, are absolutely
descriptive of the story’s screwy milieu, and not just of one director’s warped
worldview. Dumbly enjoyable on some level, indefensible on many others, Pain & Gain remains a guilty
pleasure, but I’ll say this for it: unlike the slouchy Spring Breakers, it at least commits to its tackiness, going
toe-to-toe with its own characters in debatable judgement and devil-may-care
taste.
One Direction: This is Us and Pain & Gain are in cinemas nationwide.
