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Glee - The 3D Concert Movie (2011)

Director: Kevin Tancharoen

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From Time Out London

Let’s be clear, Gleeks: this is not ‘Glee: The Movie’ but rather, as the title suggests, a live recording of the cast’s 2011 arena show. There’s plenty of singing, but, unlike the TV version, there’s no spurious plot stringing the songs together. The downside is that there’s no place here for the show’s scene-stealing queen of mean, Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch). But it does mean that the ‘Glee’ concert experience – the show that entertained 150,000 Gleeks when it touched down at the O2 earlier this year – is pure jukebox karaoke.

The concert footage is great fun –hit after hit is enthusiastically and efficiently delivered by the show’s perky young cast, in character at all times. ‘Rachel’ channels Barbra Streisand, ‘Brittany S Pierce’ does Britney Spears, and everyone joins in for ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ ’.

But the film falters when the cameras go off stage. Behind-the-scenes interview snippets, though amusing, are obviously scripted, but at least they’re in keeping with the concert-doc format. What’s entirely unnecessary are the lengthy inserts following real-life ‘Glee’ fans who have been inspired by the show to overcome adversity. So we meet a high-school student with dwarfism, a gay teenager and an Asperger’s sufferer who all learned that it’s okay to be different: heartwarming/ nauseating stories, depending on your threshold for American schmaltz. Either way, they belong in a different documentary.

Do-gooding aside, unless you’re the rare ‘Glee’ fan who fast-forwards through the singing, ‘Glee: The Concert Movie’ won’t fail to entertain. But given that the 3D adds nothing except a few streamers flying into the audience, it’ll probably work better on DVD, where you can bellow along in the privacy of your own home.

Author: Sarah Cohen

Time Out London Issue 2139: 18 – 24, 2011

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