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Friday, July 13, 2018

Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me (2014)

An American music documentary directed by James Keach.
Glen Campbell, the aging country music star, has Alzheimer's and does a last tour.
Old Glen was a riot. His sense of humor made the film. With this type of piece, we're talking low information density and more of a "slice of life" approach. This was done quite well. We saw him at home, performing and at the doctor's office. He was always joking or playing music when he wasn't totally disoriented. I would have liked more single interviews with Glen himself and not as many with his daughter and wife. I think that would have communicated the point and the subject matter better. The subject matter of him having Alzheimer's and doing the tour was fine. A documentary about an aging country music star is a noble cause and it's passable that they plugged the Alzheimer's cause, but it didn't need to be emphasized as much as was done. Getting old Glen on camera to joke, shoot the breeze and reminisce about his career would have been the strategy to go for. Without fail, old men like to tell stories. Camera-work was hit and miss. Lots of it was professionally filmed and there was some TV footage of multiple dates thrown in. There were also some scenes that looked more raw and handheld that really didn't need to be there. Who cares if dude thinks someone stole his golf clubs when he has one in his hand? The audio followed the quality level of camera-work. On the pro stuff, we had pro audio. The raw, handheld stuff was probably shot on a cell phone because it looked and sounded that way. For guitarists, he played that blue strat through most of his gigs. I find the split pickups kind of odd. Also, maple fretboards look cheap to me, but I know his guitar must be expensive. IMDb lists a rating of 8/10 and Rotten Tomatoes lists 100% Tomatometer with 88% Audience Score for an average of 89.3%. A B+ seems like an appropriate grade for this. It was decently entertaining and showed a good cross section of what Glen Campbell's life was like at the time. I rate it adequate.

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