The Sparks Brothers 2021
I remember hearing about this movie, a pet project of director Edgar Wright, about a long-lived cult synth pop band called Sparks that has been active since the 1970’s to present. They are always on the verge of breaking out, but are so offbeat it will just never happen. As I watched the movie, I kind of remember seeing them, though maybe more as part of a montage of MTV than actually on MTV. I was not familiar with any of their music and you usually only get snippets of it since the movie has to move fairly quickly through their 25 albums. It is a neat story of two committed brothers with a unique blend of music, theater, and humor. I enjoy hearing the stories behind songs and creativity, so it is neat to see mostly lesser known artists talk about this band so glowingly. I‘m not sure the music holds up for me, but it did at least get me curious and I liked some of what I was hearing. A lot of it seems like 80’s style synth pop, which I‘m not that crazy about, but it can be very catchy. While you don’t usually associate artistic integrity with 80’s pop music, the movie implies that much of the music of that era was strongly influenced by Sparks (the name of the band is Sparks, and it is an inside joke that Wright called the film The Sparks Brothers). At the same time, I feel almost like the entire documentary could be fake and the band completely fabricated, making fun of music documentaries, just as This Is Spinal Tap did. They would like the thought of that except that it would completely trivialize their entire lives. They might still like it. The weakness of the movie is the band just isn’t that familiar to me, nor are most of the people talking about the band. I like that it doesn’t focus on the fans, but just the brothers and how their act has changed and reinvented itself over the years. Definitely worth watching, but also kind of hollow.
Written: 14 Nov 2022