Brabham

I'm a big fan of motorsport biopics and documentaries and had high hopes that this would be another solid entry in the genre, the subject matter being top-drawer after all.

Alas, the way that the Brabham story is presented in this film is, at best, a meandering mess, at worst a pretentious excuse to show off disconnected artistic visuals in between compelling snippets of the history of this storied family.

A scene where the filmmakers show how they told the great Ron Tauranac to draw a line on a sheet of plexiglass summed up the director's misguided need to focus on producing something artistic, rather than telling a story that is undoubtedly worth telling. I lost count of the times I rolled my eyes at Grayson Perry's incoherent ramblings on his opinions of motorsport, rather than asking the drivers who actually raced these legendary cars (and who appear in the documentary all to briefly). Furthermore intercutting a historic sequence detailing F1's killing years with a stylistic rendition of a man on fire walking down a circuit is tone-deaf at best.

There's a great story buried in here and hearing David's journey to get the family name back and get the Brabham BT62 launched was fascinating, albeit brief, I just wish the story had been properly told and detailed. Sir Jack, David and the family deserved much better.

The biggest thing missing from this mess is Sir Jack himself.

This is all about those being interviewed, some of whom have absolutely no reason to be there and gives no sense of who Sir Jack was.

Don't waste your time.

I was hoping for so much more following on the heals of the recent Maclaren and Senna documentaries but this was a very poor attempt at a documentary of a racing ledged. The editing was very poor with constant scenes of a burning barn and tv's in a field. I really could not understand how any of that related to telling the story of J. Brabham. The edits were super fast maybe to appeal to a younger audience but then what younger audiences would appreciate a documentary on Jack? More time should have been spent on Jack as a driver that accomplished so much in his career - 3 time world champion is no small accomplishment but this film is a very poor representation of this amazing achievement.

I was really looking forward to this documentary and settled in to watch it but it soon became clear it was going to be hard and tedious watch. I don't the makers quite knew which direction they wanted to take with it so we end up with a mash of clips and styles that just doesn't work.

We get animated cartoon segments, clips of Paul Newman talking not about Jack but racing in general and quite possibly the saddest part are the pieces featuring the very elderly Ron Tauranac, John Surtess and Stirling Moss (the latter seems completely confused about what is going on and is only there to tell us his name and that he drove all types of cars in all types of races). I don't know if it was the directors intent to show these fine gentlemen in their worst light but they all look moments away from death.

There are clips of Jack and others racing but most of these are shown on a tiny Tv screen in the middle of the screen that makes it practically impossible to tell what is going on.

Then to round it all off are all the nonsense ramblings of whoever Grayson Perry. It is never shown what his connection is with Jack or even with motorsport. I did google the guy and it just says he does weird art and likes to cross dress, is there anybody alive less qualifified to talk about Jack Brabham.

If you don't mind sitting through a rambling mess then give it go but if you want to see how a documentary should be done about a racing giant then watch the McLaren one instead.

Truly awful and depressing watch.

This would have to be the worst jumbled mess of a great story that I have ever seen. And a classic example of the 'oh documentary is easy' I don't want to waste too much time on this but who tf is Grayson Perry...? Paul Newman!!!! Really poor filmmaking & the director should be banished from this industry. Honestly bad bad bad !!! And PS the narrator should have stayed home .