jbergez-1

I sat down to catch a few minutes of this documentary, to see whether I might want to make real time to view it at a later date. An hour and a half later, I unglued myself from the couch, having been thoroughly entertained and, in the process, educated a little about a world I knew absolutely nothing about. You should know this IS a documentary, not a music or concert movie; probably it will leave you wishing you could have heard more of the singing, including complete songs rather than snippets. But the film's center of gravity is the personalities and drive of the singers, the joy they bring to audiences and themselves, and the rigors of barbershop competition. If you're like me, you'll find the subject way more fascinating than you imagine going in, and the competitors a delight to get to know.

This film takes you on one family's impossible journey, and makes you feel every step of their odyssey. Beautifully acted and photographed, heartbreakingly real. Its last line, with its wistful hope, is one of the more powerful in memory.

In this movie, everything happens in ponderous, pointless slow motion. The movie is like a leaning tower that takes forever to fall. Lots of reaction shots of people looking grave, or possibly, just out of the grave. The screenplay aims for sonorousness but succeeds only in being incredibly trite, not to mention predictable. The acting is wooden, all right, but then so are the lines. Leave it to Hollywood to take a grand theme and make a tedious costume soap opera out of it. See Spartacus instead, or, if you must, Gladiator.