Brabham

Jack Brabham was a great Australian sportsman and often forgotten as our tennis players and Olympians take Centre stage. I was so looking forward to this tribute to Jack but the viewers and Jack have been let down. So much wonderful footage that is flicked on the screen for short amounts of time or shown on a very small old style TV set in an lounge room. Then we have Grayson Perry giving social commentary and lots of clips of Paul Newman. What's going on? Another disappointing thing was when they interviewed Brabhams collaborator ,Ron Tauranac. Ron then went on to get praise from others. We then flick to Jackie Stewart who couldn't remember Ron's name. Might have happened but was totally unnecessary to keep in the film and so disrespectful. Hopefully someone else will come up with a decent tribute!

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.

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.

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.

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 .