AboveDeepBuggy Some things I liked some I did not.

Majorthebys Charming and brutal

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

runamokprods Amazing live performances captured on film are the reason to see to see this. The interviews with Janis don't reveal much, and there's no real sense of her history.Even the stage stuff is shot pretty straightforwardly, but, man-o-man could she sing! One wonderful thing is that a lot of the numbers are uncut, allowed to go their full length, which, with Janis in concert, could easily be 8 minutes or more. The power, the emotion, the energy, the sexiness, the sweet sense of fun she brought to the stage could only be hinted at on her albums. For those reasons it's more than worth sitting through the slightly homogenized off-stage material.

foreverjanis this is "must have" for all the people out-there that are loving Janis.It's a really touching film,Janis is just playing herself.Beautiful,magnificent and above.Unfortunately,Janis's story hasn't yet really been said properly and it is my feeling that she deserve much more than she got by now,at least for the passion that she put in her music.Watch her in this film,see with what intensity she can perform and you'll understand.Janis is among the few that live for whatever she is doing and that thing is shown in every aspect of this film.Watch her especially in live performances,you never saw anything like that before! A film on which i could die watching it.

John Seal Though I am not a fan of the music of Janis Joplin, I found this to be a refreshing look at the brief life and times of the Texas-born wailer. Completely lacking in artifice, Joplin comes across as the archetypal high school outcast, a frumpy artistic type who found liberation living the life of a San Francisco hippy and singing the blues. Joplin comes across as extremely likable and is bluntly honest about her shortcomings as a singer: she pays tribute to Aretha Franklin, acknowledging her own lack of subtlety which, she hoped wistfully, might come in time. That time, of course, never came, and we are left with the extremely erratic results. Joplin is best remembered for her decent if clumsy takes on Ball and Chain and Piece of My Heart, and those tracks are represented here, but the versions of Tell Mama, Cry Baby, and Maybe are frankly embarrassing. Joplin also struggles with Gershwin's Summertime, but the results there are better, partly because the song is so mighty it defies all attempts to lessen its power, and partly because the Kozmic Blues Band wisely chose to arrange it in a raga rock style which still sounds quite fresh today. The film ends with a wistful photo montage set to the tune of Me and Bobby McGee, the posthumous 1971 hit that reunited Janis with the country music of her childhood. Regardless of how you rate Joplin's music, I defy anyone to watch this film and not come away deeply impressed by the humor, intelligence, and warmth of its subject.

lib-4 Having seen Joplin live in concert in the 60's it was good to go back and see footage of her singing, and the interviews. also it was great to hear her sing again- no one could wail like "the rose"-- parts of the film seem dated- but of course this was 30 years ago--- ah nostalgia!