The Sparks Brothers

Here we have Edgar Wright's first stab at documentary film making, and it's something of a departure from his style. The chuckles are there but he seems to have gone for a reasonably risk-free structure - lots of talking heads, ups and downs of the subject, a chronology of their career and some pretty good music (a given for a music doco, I'd guess). 

The subjects are Ron and Russell Mael of the band Sparks, admittedly unknown to me (aside from one song that was on the Kick-Ass soundtrack - This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us). One of the taglines is 'Your favourite band's favourite band' and the folk that front up to wax lyrical about Sparks are fairly glittery. You have Beck, some of Duran, Duran, Flea from Chili Peppers, Bernard Butler from Suede, Alex Kapranos from Franz Ferdinand, some of New Order, Roddy Bottum from Faith No More, Mike Myers, Weird Al Yankovic, Jason Schwartzman, Neil Gaiman, Giorgio Moroder, Adam Buxton, Mark Gatiss, bloody hell, this is near endless. I'll stop there.

The Sparks Brothers benefits from having the Mael brothers as its focus - these are two driven, uncompromising fellas, and watching their career unfold from Glam 70s, to Electro 80s, to all sorts of pop throughout, to their 'comeback' of recent years is pretty intriguing stuff. They take the act of not taking themselves too seriously, very seriously indeed. When badgered into writing a song that people could dance to, they released 'Music That You Can Dance To' as a supreme piss-take. A quick scan of some of their tracks read like a Smiths or Ween playlist. You have top titles like 'I Can't Believe You Would Fall for All the Crap in This Song', '(She Got Me) Pregnant', 'Let the Monkey Drive', 'What Are All These Bands So Angry About?', 'Angst in My Pants', 'I Thought I Told You to Wait in the Car', 'Everybody's Stupid' and 'Tits'.

This is a fine doco about a band that not enough people know about but more should. These guys made pretty esoteric music (and still are), and the theme, if any, is that they singularly didn't give a fuck what anyone else thought about them. Bravo, gents. 

The Sparks Brothers opens at the Luna and Palace Cinemas on July 8th.

See also:

This might be the first time I've recommended a film that hasn't been released yet but the Mael brothers have written a film for Leos Carax called Annette (2021) - Marion Cotillard, Adam Driver starring. Another mint, recent music doco is Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan (2020), directed by Julien Temple.