TrueEssence
First, I'd like to say that I am 21 years old. I wanted to mash out any misconception that only teenagers and little kids enjoys listening to this group. Anyway, I've known about them since they came out on the scene and seeing their first "My Girl" music video. Adorable.So, years later, my 15 year old sister loves them and plays their music and I find myself really getting into it. Their music may not be completely "original" but these days that's hard to find and yes, they do talk about girls but what 16 and 17 year old boy doesn't? I hope as they get older and mature and go into their 3,4 etc albums, they branch out and sing about more. It would definitely help them keep their audience and welcome more as they get older.I went with my sister to see their "All Around the World" concert. Now, I find myself getting rather reacquainted with the group. I really like them. This movie really shows just how they came to be where they are. This is a documentary, it's meant to showcase where they were before, how they got there and what they're doing at the time this was being filmed. I think many people get the wrong impression. It's a documentary, not a movie. It's not narcissistic or anything like that, if it was, then all documentaries about people's lives are just that right?Prodigy, Princeton, Ray Ray and Roc Royal are four talented young men who are paving their way for this generation through a boy band. They are African American which is another plus because who was the last African American boy band? This documentary shows the fans who they are outside of Mindless Behavior. They are teenagers, they like to have fun and they feel extremely blessed to be where they are. If you are a fan, you'll love this movie, if you're not a fan I think it could be enjoyable if you allow yourself to not be so judgmental about four boys just wanting everyone to know "this is us". That's not wrong. It's endearing. I like them a lot and I hope that this is the first step in many big things in their future. "Mindless" is no longer negative but a positive word. Stay true to who you are without thinking of what others have to say about it. That's being mindless to them and they really inspire girls and boys their age to be who they are.This film really shows that. Definitely watchable many times.
zztopstop00
So I've worked with this band for several years. Allow me to take you behind the veil with an actual review.OK, so the movie itself is all platitudes, do your best, be who you are (except also be "mindless" though that is never really explained) and yadda yadda yadda. Be who you are is weird coming from people who do not choose their own names or personas nor write their own songs (and with the auto-tune, they barely sing them) nor do their own dance moves, so yeah, be who a marketing team says you should be. But don't be gay, the boys are kind of homophobic. For the most part, their moves are very precise and the feats of onstage dance and movement are very apt and keen, but the rest, yikes. It's so damn clumsy, it's constantly hitting you over the head with "do your best" and that's sad because an actual movie IS lurking here, but it's not the one on screen.The real movie is a study on fame and money. How a record executive saw a hole in a medium and was "called by God" (no, seriously, that's his reasoning) to audition 4 kids to create a boy band. To pull them from school, alter their names (they can't be called by their own names, they MUST be called by their stage ones, so Roc Royal is actually called that at ALL times) and change everything about them to create a team / cash machine. They're also kind of separated form their families and friends for LONG periods of time, in one case, a full year. Also, pulling them out of school is true, they're never there. I saw their teacher scrape by to get a TINY bit of learning out of them and yeah, it's tragic what they do not know. I've seen them go on tours in winter and not bring coats to Chicago or Detroit, it's... strange. They're also barely supervised while on tour. They have a wholesome image but it's just that, an image. This is not done in a drinking or smoking way, though they DO love Chris Brown to a disturbing degree, but I wouldn't leave my daughter with them. Here is where the movie is; in the trailer Prodigy goes off as a 7 year old about not "being famous but he's hoping and praying". Hey, how about wanting to create art not for fame, but because it is what you LIKE to do? Isn't THAT being yourself and the other way of having everyone else tell you how to dress, act, sing, dance and more or less "be" kind of making you just a fake human being? The weirdest part of the movie is when they travel to Michael Jackson's childhood home. The kids of MB for the most part come from bad areas, like Compton and such, and MJ's house in Gary is tiny and in a lower income area. They're are lots of moments of reflection that should seem forced but might be genuine, making them all the creepier (in general, production and the boys seem to fetishize Jackson to a disturbing degree) but the reflection should be that fame is fleeting like it was for the rest of the Jackson 5, or Menudo, 98 Degrees, New Kids on the Block, Bobby Brown or any other fleeting act, except these guys hardly have a mainstream audience, as this movies shamelessly tries to make a grab for. Fame is fleeting as is money, and with the way they spend it, it's going to be like MC Hammer, that's the real tragic element here.This movie is also a "coat-tails" movie. Justin Bieber (who MB opened for a few years back) also has a song called "All Around the World" and ALSO did a doc about a tour he did as did Katy Perry, except that one I have heard on the radio, and just on Radio Disney. This is their U.S. tour, it's not all around the world (released the same week as their album of the same name, changed at the last second to "All around the World" from House party or something like that). This movie seems to capitalize on that factor rather shamelessly when you see how it all lines up. It also opens with them "winning" the BET Coke-a-Cola Viewers Choice award, a feat that sounds great but then you realize that anyone can vote as many times as they want and if you, an adult, think you're going to out-vote a teenage girl, you're wrong. One fan voted 60,000 times, and this is spoken with no sense of irony. That's how they beat out Beyonce and other acts you HAVE heard of. What a weird marketing tool; watchable if you're mindless, otherwise I'd save your money, there is nothing new outside of an after school special here.
