User reviews

This gave me a great insight into the music and gave a lot of background to his reason for writing his songs. I found this gave me a greater appreciation of his music. The commentaries from some very well known British singer / songwriters and American artists was excellent. He performs quite a few of his songs from all 4 of his albums, not always the whole song but enough to keep it interesting. I found the honesty with which he talks about himself to be refreshing and he certainly does not leave anything out about his life and growing up. His friends and family also add a lot to the portrait of Rufus letting us in on his childhood and how he has been influenced by the different types of music his mother and father were performing and playing as he grew up. I was lucky enough to see him live in April 2005 and he played for nearly 2 and a half hours. The energy he shows on stage comes across well on this show.

I had been hoping to get my hands on this documentary ever since I learned of its existence almost a year ago. "A documentary? About Rufus? With live performances? No! Yes? Yes!" I checked movie rental stores (even specialty ones with big music sections!), libraries, etc., to try and get it cheap, all to no avail. Then I decided to buy it for my girlfriend for Valentine's Day, but no stores in my town had it in stock (Every Puccini opera ever filmed, in stock and ready to buy. Rufus? No). She didn't get the Rufus Wainwright documentary for Valentine's Day. I eventually gave in and ordered it from Amazon for her birthday. So by this time I had been expecting it to be just about the greatest film I had ever seen. I was expecting to watch it, and, coming out of my rapture, go home to my guitar where I would instantly write an album's worth of songs with all the melodious vocals, brutally honest, yet serenely poetic, lyrics, and unconventionally beautiful harmonic structures of Rufus' music.

This didn't happen.

The film was pretty good. Certain songs' meanings, of which I had no previous understanding, were clarified by Rufus himself. This was interesting. I would even say I appreciate his music more now.

However, one gets the feeling that the folks who compiled this film didn't exactly have all the juicy interview content they wanted and therefore filled out a lot of the movie's time with the same faces saying the same thing: "Rufus is the best. He is pop music's anointed savior. He is better than Elvis, The Beatles, and Public Enemy combined. He should be made king. Of pop music land." Or something along those lines. Gushy.

Still, however, recommended for Rufus fans.