What’s the point of music documentary? To appeal to diehard fans, or to open an artist up to a wider audience? The best do both, but ‘Get Better’ is strictly for the converted – and how much you get out of it will depend on your tolerance for Frank Turner’s earnest brand of anthemic acoustic rock. We meet the British star at the fag-end of a long tour, recently signed to a major label and planning a new album. Filmmaker and friend Ben Morse then tracks a year in his life, via a recording session in Nashville, a brief spell drinking himself into oblivion and the start of yet another tour.
The film attempts to offer insight into Turner’s world, but never really digs too deeply: his hate-mail-baiting politics are touched upon and then dropped, his penchant for a tipple is mentioned but we never really see him doing anything boozily off-the-wall. There’s hardly even any music, for better or worse – the film is compiled almost entirely of interviews, many of them with Turner, who never seems to tire of talking about himself. It’s all very slickly edited, and there’s the odd interesting insight into the modern music scene – the power of labels, the importance of finding a live audience. But unless you’re a committed Frankophile, feel free to give this one a miss.
