Arena: An Absurd Notion

When I first saw this "movie", I was expecting something more on the lines of Barbarella with some of my favourite band thrown in. That is not what I got. The whole movie is like a concert music video. It has great live footage in it and Duran Duran look fab! Esp. John Taylor's look when he sees that girl in the hall. But I'm more of an Andy girl.... If you love Duran Duran and you want to see them in concert, buy or rent this movie because it is awesome. Also check out their documentary Sing Blue Silver, it is to die for.

This film is almost sensory overload. It is a visual feast of color, not to mention fabulous-looking people, and it obviously features great music, considering the stars and the era in which it was made. Duran Duran have always taken the music video a bit farther as an art form, so this was the perfect genre for their full-length film. Not that this is just a long-running music video. Far from it. It seems to finally encapsulate all they have wanted to express, but were previously kept to only three to five minutes. Very cute storyline incorporating a visit from Dr. Duran Duran, a bit of the history of the band and it's followers, and the development of the music to its highest point.

One of the most bizarre companion videos to an album ever made, IMO, Milo O'Shea reprises his role as megalomaniacal Dr. Durand Durand from Jane Fonda's old babes-in-space flick BARBARELLA, and winds up making it a lot more interesting than the movie which spawned it.

Having somehow escaped the corrosive destruction of The Matmos, Dr. Durand, still just as loopy as a test monkey in a centrifuge chamber, decides he wants to conquer Earth and simultaneously wreak his revenge on the poofy-haired teen idols who have "taken his name in vain," and stolen what he perceives to be in his warped brain, a piece of his past glory.

Mind you, I'm giving this vid-movie more credit for having a plot than it probably deserves. What director Russell Mulcahy (HIGHLANDER) was about here is images, textures and sound, and ways to combine them that would either leave you mesmerized, or with an intense migraine. Anyway, aside from the story nonsense is some great concert footage of The Boys, and as I mentioned before, O'Shea's OTT performance, which works splendidly here.

Which is not to say that ARENA is for all tastes. DD fans or people who enjoyed the accompanying album who'd like another perspective on songs like "The Reflex," "Save A Prayer," "Union of the Snake" and "Rio" will want to check this out.

But good luck finding it. Except as a rental, ARENA is out of print in most places. Maybe VH1 or MTV will show it on some extremely rare occasion...

Decent concert ruined by pointless cuts.

This film captures Duran Duran at the height of their powers and popularity, in Oakland, CA on their 1984 US tour. All their big hits are there: Hungry like the Wolf, Is there something I should know?, Rio, Union of the Snake, Save a Prayer, Wild Boys, Planet Earth, The Reflex and Girls on Film.

The movie accurately captures the energy of the band, plus the adoration of the fans.

Unfortunately, this is all ruined by cuts to an attempt to make some sort of sci fi movie in parallel. The parallel movie borrows from Barbarella, the movie from which Duran Duran got their name. However, it adds nothing to the concert. Worse than that, it wrecks the concert. The cuts are in the middle of songs, and are incredibly irritating.

Leave out the sci fi bs and this would have been a good concert film.

Filmed and released during the height of Duran Duran's popularity, this concentrated bundle of self-importance tries in vain to straddle two genres and only succeeds in spoiling them both. Footage of the group on-stage during their 1984 Seven and the Ragged Tiger tour is interspersed with (and interrupted by) loud, overplayed vignettes of an invading alien force, which results in an effect similar to constant channel-flips between MTV and an episode of The Transformers. The inclusion of Milo O'Shea, reprising his role as the evil Dr. Durand Durand from the film Barbarella (source of the band's name) is a cute nod, but hardly enough to overcome the surrounding trainwreck. Even the band's performance, what little we actually get to see of it, is sub-par, as if we've caught them on the last few dates of a particularly draining tour. Die-hards and casuals alike should try to forget this one ever existed.