I felt disappointed with myself when I could not love the documentary about South-African musician come builder Rodriguez with the same verve the people who recommended it to me did. I had mixed feelings. My impression was that while the filmmakers had that one great bit of novelty (pop singer giving it all up, perceived dead, starts a new life, while he is getting more famous every minute, without knowing about it), they are not skilled enough as documentary authors to really make something out of it, finding an angle to make me care.
When you boil down the story to its essential, there is not even too much of a novelty: he used to be a musician, now he’s in construction, but his old records still kind of sell. Hmm… That’s kind of nice for him, but as a film story it requires a bit of sprucing up, and you would hope that the man himself has something interesting to contribute. However, he is not interesting or edgy enough of a character to make watching his interview bits work. Apart from that, there is just the short news item of a rediscovered former pop start, blown up into a feature length documentary. Did not help that I do not care too much for his kind of music…
If you read Dan The Man’s review, you will learn more about it, at least he liked the music …
thomas4cinema 