Filmed concert performances give sense of a close encounter

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20080122-9999-1c22u2.html

 

Source: Signon SanDiego.com

By George Varga

UNION-TRIBUNE POP MUSIC CRITIC

January 22, 2008

Almost? Almost. Almost!

No other rock concert film, past or present, will inspire viewers to repeatedly think “almost” as much as “U2 3D,” which opens tomorrow at a lone area theater and is billed as the first live action, real-time, digital 3-D film ever.

A massive undertaking that sets a new standard for almost transforming a movie theater into a bigger-than-life concert experience, it was filmed at stadium shows in Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Argentina during U2's 2005/2006 world tour. A final song, the coda-like “Yahweh” (done over the closing credits), was apparently shot at an Australian show with less of a visual emphasis.

The movie eschews any interview segments and backstage footage, which constituted a significant portion of U2's previous concert flick, 1988's “Rattle and Hum.” Instead, the focus is on the music, with most of lead singer Bono's between-song comments trimmed to a bare minimum.

This is generally a sound move. But the decision to include only 14 songs, about eight fewer than most concerts during the tour, is not.

Surely, most attendees will be U2 fans eager to savor as much of the band as possible on the big screen, not idle viewers who decided to attend at the last minute after failing to get into a screening of “Alvin and the Chipmunks.”

Also missing, with just one exception, are the impromptu snippets of classics by other artists – such as Al Green's “Take Me to the River” or Patti Smith's “People Have the Power” – that Bono and his band mates often inject to make each U2 concert a special, in-the-moment experience.

As a consequence, despite terrific versions of such favorites as “Bullet the Blue Sky,” “Where the Streets Have No Name” and the triumphant “Pride (In the Name of Love),” the film has a truncated feel that no amount of visual razzle-dazzle can counter-balance.

The other problem is that razzle-dazzle itself. As overwhelming as the film is visually, the sense of sameness that gradually begins to set in diminishes the film's “wow” factor. The initial peaks “U2 3D” soars to are heady indeed; less so when they are revisited time and again in less than 90 minutes.

A notable exception occurs during an encore of “The Fly,” when the use of live performance footage and computer graphics takes viewers into a new realm altogether. It's almost enough to suggest another, even better, film still waiting to be made.

  

National Geographic Presentation of a 3ality Digital production. Directors: Catherine Owens, Mark Pellington. Cast: U2. Running time: 1 hr., 25 min.