Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out (documentary)
Movie Review
"Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out (documentary)"
Review by Eric D. Snider
Grade: D+
Rating: Not Rated
Released: Saturday, January 21, 2006
Directed by:
Cast:
Before you watch "Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out," which is basically 75 minutes of Stewart Copeland's home movies of the seminal '70s and '80s rock band, consider this question: Do you REALLY want to watch 75 minutes of Stewart Copeland's home movies? Do you want to watch 75 minutes of ANYONE'S home movies?
Because it turns out Copeland's home movies are as boring as everyone else's. Sure, Copeland was drummer for the Police, and he filmed lots of stuff between the time he got his Super 8 camera in 1978 and the time the band broke up amicably in 1985. Yeah, the footage shows Copeland, Andy Summers and Sting in their natural habitat, backstage at shows and in tour buses on the road. But understand this: Just because you have filmed something doesn't mean you have made a movie. The surveillance camera at 7-Eleven films things, too.
"Everyone Stares" sounds like a good idea, but it isn't one. Copeland, a folksy, sincere-sounding man now in his 50s, narrates the footage, which very loosely tells the story (from Copeland's point of view) of the group's rise to prominence. No new interviews were conducted; the film consists entirely of the stuff Copeland shot back in the day.
The problem is, Copeland didn't know he was making a movie when he shot it. He wasn't careful to make sure key moments were documented; he was just fooling around. So the Police's most successful, most legendary album "Synchronicity" barely gets a mention, simply because Copeland didn't happen to film much that related to it. At another juncture, someone says, "We're starting to not support each other. It's getting lonely in this band." The band is apparently on the verge of breaking up -- yet there is no footage to document that. No fights, no arguments, no tension. Just Copeland telling us about it, 20 years after the fact.
The film is a disappointment, plain and simple. Hardcore fans of the band will be delighted to see ANY footage, of course, coherent, revealing or otherwise. The rest of us are left to feel like the screaming fans pounding on the tinted limousine windows: We catch a few glimpses of what's going on inside, but mostly we're left out.
Grade: D+
Not rated, probably R for a lot of harsh profanity
1 hr., 15 min.
Copyright © Eric D. Snider.
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This item has 1 comment
October 28, 2008 at 1:35 pm
I must say I liked it quite a bit - he did a good job of showing that despite being on top of the world, the band was fairly confined and only through breaking up would they have any freedom. The final scene, with the guys handcuffed for some reason high above the ground, where Sting says "I blame all my problems on the guy holding the camera" really said it all. The idea behind the film is that it's all candid and real, meaning that it gives a better idea than most documentaries of what actually being in a rock band was like. If you're not a huge Police fan (like me) though this will be very boring.