Pearl Jam 20 DVD Review (1 Viewer)

[mattCR]

Pearl Jam 20 DVD Release Distributor: Columbia DVD Dual Layer Presentaton Dolby Digital 5.1 / PCM 2.0

Cameron Crowe delivered one of my favorite films on the music industry years ago in the often under appreciated “Almost Famous” .    Crowe seems to have a genuine love for the music business, and  a way to tell a story.   So, when I found that there would be a biography of sorts, a documentary of Pearl Jam, I thought: this could be an insightful look at the kind of music I remember from my college days.

But all of that hope started to drift out the window at about the 40 minute mark, when I realized I was spending a lot of time checking my watch and not a lot of time enjoying what was being said in the film.   Pearl Jam 20 covers the rise of the band Pearl Jam, without really covering the rise at all.   Yes, there is talk about the bands before Pearl Jam.  And there is a discussion about how it was “amazing” they went on tour with Lollapalooza in 1992 how that was “their big break”.   But moments like that seem oddly out of place when the reason they were on the Lollapalooza tour was the success of Ten, released the year before.  

Hits are discussed briefly, and the interviews are frankly incredibly vapid.  Some of the interviews are frankly cringe worthy; they are hard to get through and they tend to do far more to damage my memory of the band and music then almost anything that could be said otherwise.  The greatest problem with PJ20 is that it’s the kind of thing you’d expect a true fan to issue.   There isn’t a real look at the band, interviews are milquetoast at best, wandering and nonsense at worst.    Even “BIG” moments in their career are blushed over in a way that just doesn’t make any sort of impression.

Pearl Jam 20 also suffers from serious lapses – key events that are completely missing from the film.   Nirvana, who of course led the way in the grunge movement gets a minor reference but almost nothing more.  Impact on and by other bands is glossed over.   Music videos, especially major successes like “Jeremy” receive very short mentions and not a lot else. In the end, I guess this is a documentary that just doesn’t seem to document very much.   There isn’t a lot of music for you to say “it’s worth it for the music” because there is very little music, and no full songs of anything. Video Quality 3.5 / 5 Presented in 1.78 Anamorphic, Pearl Jam 20 provides a real mix of a lot of media.   Archival footage looks like.. archival footage.  Low quality, often looking as though it just spun off an 8mm reel, it is full of buzz, noise, shaky camera work and defects.    In some ways, I found this fairly interesting.  It lends a unique look at it and it does provide an air of authenticity.   So, what knocks the video quality?   Well, while the retro footage is nice, and new footage looks as good as DVD can, the problem with the video is really that the way it is filmed provides too much footage that cannot be easily understood.. or ever understood.   Outside of Blair Witch, I can’t think of any time where I had so many scenes of a camera seemingly aimed at the ground, wildly nowhere and then zooming in and out at a target, and difficult to watch cut scenes that just didn’t work.    For me, the archival interviews and some of the stage performances were good, but it was the moments of filler that lowers the way I look at the video – it creates a very inconsistent feel that is hard to follow.

Audio Quality 4.5 / 5 I was really pleased with the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix provided on Pearl Jam 20.   For a DVD, it effectively renders most of the concert scenes, dialog is sharp, and the performance snippets we receive are really well done.   Archival footage at times has hiss/hum but that tends to be the way it was originally intended and like I said in the form of video, I found the contrast of settings and media types to be a plus, not a drawback.  Also on the disc is a PCM 2.0 soundtrack, which is “OK” but nothing spectacular.  All extras are presented in PCM 2.0. Extras 4 / 5 The extras are actually a nice set of featurettes.   Mike McCready Writing "Faithfull";  Jeff Ament in Montana;  Stone Gossard Seattle Driving Tour;  Boom Gaspar Joins the Band;  The Eddie Vedder House Tour;  Matt Cameron Writing "The Fixer", "No Anything", and "Come Back".  In the form of music and performances, the featurettes provide more then the film itself and to me were more engaging in short bites because of it. Summary: 3 / 5 It’s hard for me to really write a review of Pearl Jam: 20.   The soundtrack and score is good.   The visual style is interesting and the effort undertaken here is a good one.    The problem is as a documentary it doesn’t say anything new.   There is nothing really on this disc that I think even a casual fan will say “wow, I didn’t know that!”   The other problem is that the narrative used is difficult to follow, as we jump around through the timeline instead of a consistent path, and the interviews rotate between boring and laughable. I will say up front that I have enjoyed Pearl Jam.   I never felt as though they had an album I would put on the level of say ‘In Utero”, but I always thought they had a unique style.   But the DVD comes across more as a self-congratulatory backslapping with very little to make me feel as though I learned much.  I was asked who would I recommend Pearl Jam 20 to, and I the only audience I can think of is completists.   People who have to have every single Pearl Jam item there is.   For those people, this is a blind buy.   For almost everyone else, I would tell you: rent first.