80's pop music "trendsetters" Spandau Ballet -- an arguable term if you look at their limited supply of #1 hits and garish taste in stage fashion versus the street clothing the world around them is seen wearing in archive footage featured herein -- are given bog standard rock doc treatment in SOUL BOYS OF THE WESTERN WORLD, an overlong, not particularly revelatory and utterly TV-worthy "behind-the-music-but-not-too-deep"-style documentary about the self-possessed members of the group. Their stereotypical ascent to international stardom from blue collar roots during particularly tumultuous times in Britain, their handful of hit songs, eventual breakup, largely-forgotten court battle and successful 2009 reunion are covered via extensive vintage clips and painfully canned voice-over from the band members (so rehearsed-sounding, in fact, that a writer should probably have been credited), but the whole thing is soft-pedaled to the degree that it becomes obvious the subjects are participating largely to drum up interest in yet another reunion circa the film's release in 2014. Professionally assembled by director George Hencken, a producer on several little-seen documentaries by Julian Temple, this show will undoubtedly delight now-middle aged fans, but others may be less enthralled, as the finished product -- perhaps unintentionally -- sketches these chaps as no less superficial than most pop acts of their ilk, and just as full of themselves.
Review of Soul Boys of the Western World
