Last chance! We are leaving in 30 minutes... It'll be GREAT! I'm so stoked... Rattle and Hum as been playing for the last hour...
Here's the write up:
It takes a band almost larger than life to stand up to the scrutiny of a 3-D IMAX film.
Luckily, U2 is such a band. Its ambition sometimes crosses over into bombast, but that same ambition and large-scale showmanship is what makes U2 3D such a satisfying experience. Pretty decent little band, too.
The film boasts a lot of firsts - the first digital 3-D, multi-camera production of a live-action event; the most 3-D cameras ever used to make a movie, etc. All well and good - truly well and good; the 3-D effects are amazing. At times it's sort of like getting a lap dance from Bono. When members of the audience hold up cellphones to take pictures or wave their arms back and forth, you want to hold your hand out to keep them from bumping into you.
But the true measure of a concert film, even one loaded with more special effects than a science-fiction movie, is how well the music holds up.
Just fine, thanks. U2 plays recent songs - Vertigo and Beautiful Day, for instance - and goes back, sometimes way back, for hits like New Year's Day and Sunday Bloody Sunday. Huge hits like One and With or Without You are also represented, as are a few lesser-known songs, including Miss Sarajevo and Yahweh.
Obviously, how much you enjoy the movie is going to depend largely on how much you like U2. But the performances, filmed at shows in huge stadiums in Mexico City, Brazil, Chile and Argentina, are excellent. The Edge's guitar retains its angular, well, edge, and the rhythm section of Larry Mullen Jr. and Adam Clayton remains the underrated anchor of the band.
The cameras are everywhere. We see the crowd from the band's perspective, the band from the crowd's perspective and both from above. While U2 hasn't quite solved the riddle of how you make a stadium show appear intimate, when it seems as if they're practically stepping on your toes in an IMAX theater, it's taken a step in the right direction.
An IMAX film offers U2, long a band known for grand statements - Bono has spent more time in the last few years circling the globe seeking debt relief for poor countries than he has writing songs, seems like - the perfect venue for theatrical gestures. Yet Bono keeps the proselytizing-rock-star act in check for the most part.
Of course, it wouldn't be a U2 concert without some kind of theatrical elements. This one's no different. As the band winds down Miss Sarajevo, a young woman appears on a giant screen, reading the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights. When she finishes, the screen (and stadium) goes blank for a beat - and then the band blares into (Pride) In the Name of Love, its much-loved anthem about Martin Luther King Jr.
It's either wildly effective or ridiculously hokey, depending on your taste for that kind of drama. (I practically stood and cheered, so you know where I fall on the question.)
What other artists would even attempt that kind of thing? U2 is the most cinematic band out there. It's difficult to imagine any other that would work as well in this format. Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band - no strangers to rock theater - come to mind, but the list is otherwise short. The Rolling Stones have become actors playing themselves as younger men. Bands like the New Pornographers, Sparklehorse and Spoon are making great music, really fantastic stuff. But they're not big, not in the way U2 is - not in a way that would make you want to see them on a 40-foot screen in three dimensions.
U2 is. The experience of seeing a concert movie, no matter how technically remarkable, will never replace the experience of being at the show. But U2 3D comes awfully close.
I'll review it later tonight for you!