When our cinema screens are being invaded by biography films like Justin Bieber: Never Say Never or Katy Perry - Part of Me, how can all of those things be fulfilled when the person in question is 19 years old or when the events of the film only happened last year?!
Katy Perry - Part of Me is a documentary film that follows pop star Katy Perry through her year-long 2011 world tour as well as explaining how she became the pop star that she is today. Cue lots of interviews with fans, people that work with her and her family telling you how amazing she is, the occasional filler of a song that she sings in concert and then some down time of where Perry is backstage, rehearsing for the next show or visiting family at home. Katy Perry - Part of Me follows the blueprint o the fastly-growing established pop star documentary film almost to an exact T. The main difference is that Perry's film tries to add some emotional weight to the film by including her relationship breakdown with then husband, Russell Brand, before the uplifting "don't let anyone get you down, ever!!" ending.
Let me start by saying, I'm not a Katy Perry super-fan. I'm not a KatyCat, so this film probably isn't aimed at me in the slightest. I went into this film hoping to see a little bit of some female dancer's flesh and Katy Perry dancing around provocatively on-stage (while trying to claim that she is a role-model to young girls.) Even with those extremely low expectations, I was still left disappointed. There was no female dancer flesh and Perry did dance around stage, but not provocatively enough!
The film starts off like an E! Channel special, where there are lots of interviews with family, friends and minions... I mean people who work for Katy Perry telling us how amazing she is, how hard she worked to get to where she is now and how she deserves every bit of success she has. It's all feels like a big advertisement for the Katy Perry brand with a distinct lack of the woman to speak for herself. Sure, we se her rehearsing backstage, talking to fans and singing the occasional song on-stage, but she never really talks to us herself or offers much of an insight into her past.
Sure, we get it. Katy Perry likes to think that she struggled to get where she is today. She struggled against her strict Christian upbringing and she struggled against major music studios telling her to be something she's not, but we are lead to believe that she went all against this to be something she wanted to be? So she wanted to be a scantily-dressed female singer singing songs like I Kissed a Girl and making videos where spray cream comes out from her bikini top like in California Girls?
"Thank you for believing in my weirdness!" As she claims in the film, but ultimately I couldn't help but feel I was watching some tame, family friendly version of Lady GaGa or Juliette Lewis.
However, like I said, where this film stands out from the other concert biography films is that it pulls apart the sugar-coated "look how great I am" exterior and includes the breakdown of her then marriage to celebrity, Russell Brand. While he pops up occasionally in the opening fifteen minutes of the film, almost like a teaser into saying, "You know what happens!" it's not until the last fifteen minutes that we catch a small glimpse into how it affected Perry while she was still on her world tour. I say only a small glimpse, because all we really get is some shots of Perry crying in her make-up chair, a shot of her sobbing before going on stage and then her psyching herself up before the stage lift takes her up.
We do get a short interview with her, where Perry claims that when she was younger she wanted someone to love her and accept her for what she was but that's not the way it planned out, before she bursts into tears, but we are never given anything meaty about what happened. All we get is what the newspapers told us six months ago and what we could guess - they split because they never spent any time together.
Finally, I didn't see the film in 3D, but I'm not sure why it's being released in 3D (other than to try and earn that little bit more at the Box Office.) It's certainly not filmed in a way that will be enhanced with 3D (mainly shaky hand-held camera that keeps going in and out of focus) and there are no gimmicky 'hand at the camera' moments when Perry is on stage. So, yeah. Basically, don't fork out extra for the 3D...
So, if you are a Katy Perry super fan (aka. a KatyCat), then Katy Perry - Part of Me is like a dream come true really. However, for the casual viewer, or if you are male who has no interest in Katy Perry, then give this film a miss, because you won't be seeing anything new at all.
** / *****
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