February 10, 2012 (New York, NY) -- Since The Beatles Anthology hit the airwaves almost 20 years ago just about every band with a hit or two has clamoured to unload all of the b-sides, outtakes and video footage they could cobble together. Many have been tragically bad affairs. Some have even been not too awful. All too rarely they've been great.
"Queen: Days of Our Lives" is one of those rare occasions when the filmmakers and the band get it right. The 2-part documentary was a massive hit on BBC 2 last year, and did respectibly on A&E here in the States. This is an expanded version, though not so much so that it overstays its welcome.
"As the two documentaries worked so well, we resisted the idea of making an epic 3-hour 'Extended Cut'," said producer Rhys Thomas. "They are always boring, and as Freddie (Mercury, the band's late singer) said to his manager Jim Beach in his last days: "Do anything you want with my music dear, but never make me boring!"
Fortunately, Thomas, co-producer Simon Lupton and director Matt Casey haven't. The concert and music video footage of the band looks better than ever, the new interviews with drummer Roger Taylor and guitarist Brian May and some of Queen's inner circle are charming and revealing, and the archival footage of Mercury and John Deacon, while not anything I hadn't seen before, is used cleverly in a way that furthers the narrative and underscores Taylor's and May's current-day anecdotes.
Best of all, the extras (which are longer on the Blu-ray version and worth seeking out) are not just cutting room floor cast-offs. Instead they inlcude fully realized segments that didn't quite fit into the original version of the film but were too good to go unseen. On top of that, Thomas, Lupton and Casey have gathered together as much footage from Queen's music videos as possible (the band were one of the forms pioneers) and, using alternate angles and outtakes, have cut new, pristine versions of videos for some of the band's most classic songs.
I'm not the biggest Queen fan -- they stole Live Aid, of course, and "Under Pressure" is in my Top 10 all-time favorite singles, but they just as often make me cringe -- but it's hard not to have a soft spot for a band that just about every critic derided with ferocity back in the day and went on to sell 300 million albums in spite of it. But perhaps Thomas, Lupton and Casey's ultimate tribute is that they make Queen so damn likable, even when the styles and tunes haven't worn so well.
"We set out to make the definitive Queen documentary," said Thomas. "It's a funny, honest, inspiring and ultimately tragic account of 'a certain band called Queen', as told by the band themselves. We tell the story of four students who met in West London, slogged hard and conquered the world, ultimately changing rock music forever."
This article is copyright 2012 by Jeff Slate. No part may be reprinted or referenced without permission and/or attribution. All rights reserved.
Comments