Above & Beyond: Giving Up the Day Job (2018) Reviews

• Great music, mediocre documentary

  hp-337292019-03-09

  I'm a big fan of Above & Beyond's work, and it's a very interesting concept that they steered away from DJ'ing for a bit to put together a show with fully acoustic versions of their songs that they play with actual instruments on stage, with the help of a symphonic orchestra and some fantastic singers they've worked with during their career. Their songs are very melodic, and it's no surprise that the acoustic versions work brilliantly. Most of the documentary consists of these songs being played at their last show at the Hollywood Bowl in front of a sold out crowd of over 17000 people, and the production seems really amazing. Between the songs we can see short interviews with the trio, sometimes we can peek into their "private" conversations between them and other people and see a little bit of the preparations as well. This part of the documentary is where it gets a bit awkward. Some of these conversations seem very staged and dishonest. It feels like instead of sharing genuine moments they are desperately trying to convey some kind of message with scripted dialogues that often reek of fake modesty. When this is coupled with the director's strange habit of showing weird, out of place extreme close up shots of people going hysterical during slow acoustic songs at the Hollywood Bowl, you can't help but feel that these people are a bit full of themselves. In the end, I didn't learn much about the guys (apart from the above), let alone how they put everything together for this tour. No technical details, no nothing. There wasn't a word about ups and downs, difficulties and the hard work they've put into this, which I'm absolutely sure they did, just the sugar coated fluff how awesome everything was. Honestly, it was a letdown for me.