The Commodore Story

Dry, that's probably the best explanation of what's wrong with this documentary.

While the stories are interesting and let you into another time of computers, when there was an almost hippy ethic to getting products to market, the interviews get a little boring after a while, major figures are introduced without fanfare so it's hard to keep a track on who was important and who's not. But the worst part is there is very little in the respect of showing off the hardware or the software, just a lot of talking heads.

example: "People are still programming games for the Commodore 64 and Amiga" - then show you no examples or even box art.

It suffers from the Star Trek Paradox. We must get to point A, the whole fleet is there ready to engae the big ship that's chasing us. Big ship disables the Enterprise and we never get the (hopefully) special effect laden space battle we were promised.

I really wanted to hear the stories but at times the music was so irritating it was hard to concentrate on what was being said. What was supposed to be background music just got in the way. There is also some parts that did not make sense, for example, video of what appears to be police and rescue on a highway in California. Still can't figure out why that was included.

Got about half way and the background "music" of a dissonant guitar playing almost as loudly as the person being interviewed was the last straw. I could not continue and turned it off. As another reviewer said, the "music" should be stripped out totally.

Throughout the story music plays over the top of people talking making it difficult to hear them clearly. At times a bass line is thumping over the talking. Other times the talking in one scene is much louder or quieter than the previous. It really suffers from poor editing more than from the content. I think all of the background music should be stripped from the video or at least removed from segments where people are talking. It is especially grating when someone is talking with a noisy background and the music is playing over the top.

The film maker appears at the start introducing and narrating but he is not skilled in front of camera and it starts off on the wrong foot. Then we get choppy cuts on interviews, accidental shaky cam on constantly annoying slider shots and strange zooms on static photos. A lot of recent Commodore films have been made so this is too little too late and unfortunately badly executed.

Many of the reviewers criticise the cuts, camera, storytelling etc, etc but it worked for me, really enjoyed it. Maybe because everything told here is known for me so just enjoyed it once more in a different way.

The interviews with well know Commodore and Amiga folks are good, the ad-hoc style make them feel spontaneous and genuine.

The early years of Jack Tramiel told by his son are great, touchingly told by his son, as a holocaust survivor starting calculator business and him being a harsh businessman rather stumbling into the first home-computers and chip fabs that later explodes and his exodus from Commodore.

RJ Mical's testimonial's are awesome as well as many others here, I'm sure they told them many times but still fun to hear them.

This story been told many times and this is yet another well told story.