Lightz, Cameraz ...

GORILLAZ: REJECT FALSE ICONS (B-minus) - This visual and aural collage brings to life the virtual Brit-hop band created 20 years ago by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett, but it's all quite an assault on the senses. The documentary spans the length of the "Humanz" tour in 2017-18.

Denholm Hewlett, apparently the offspring of Jamie, offers a fawning appreciation of the hard-working, highly creative founders of Gorillaz, and throws in a good number of collaborators who pass through the studio sessions and tour dates. But this is all too much and not enough at the same time. The animated characters fly past on the screen with little or no context. (I closed my eyes for brief stretches.) Songs are chopped into 30-second snippets. We lurch back and forth from studio to stage, sometimes out of chronological order.

Albarn and friends too often mug for the camera, hyper aware of the cameras following them around. We get repetitive visuals, like the pre-show huddle that gets referenced at least a half dozen times. It's all a jumble, and maybe the kids (though most Gorillaz fans, at this point, aren't so fresh-faced) need the hyperactive jangle to keep them from fidgeting too much with their phones in their plush cineplex seats. I would have preferred longer, more in-depth studio sections alternating with a few extended concert pieces in the vein of "Stop Making Sense."

In the end, it is difficult to appreciate the musical expertise of Albarn and the visual genius of Hewlett, and that's a shame

BONUS TRACK
A highlight is Peven Everett. Here he is with his cartoon pals, Noodle and 2-D, in "Strobelite":