Two movies that promise an interesting premise but fail to deliver the goods.
HATE TO LOVE: NICKELBACK (B-minus) - Boy, hey, what a great bunch of guys these maligned Canadian rockers in Nickelback are. You have to give them credit for grinding it out over the years and enduring the universal sneers of music snobs accusing them of robotically crapping out corporate cookie-cutter MOR pabulum.
It's literally right there in the title of the movie -- this is the band everyone loves to hate (or maybe hates to admit to loving). But the documentary has little interest in exploring the cultural phenomenon of four guys suffering as improbable pariahs. We get a glancing recognition of it in the first half and brief reprise toward the end, but this is just not that movie. It feels like we wait for some kind of payoff that never comes.
Instead, we get a rote career overview of four super-nice guys -- three of whom grew up together in a small town called Hanna in Alberta -- who churn out radio-friendly power ballads like "Photograph" and quirky earworms like "Rockstar." No offense, but these guys are earnestly inoffensive. In other words, Canadian.
At times this plays like the Hallmark channel's counter-punch to the crazy Metallica documentary "Some Kind of Monster." It's like a VH-1 "Behind the Music" episode with the middle section (the inevitable descent into drugs and dissension) cut out and replaced with a feel-good story from the drummer. I'm thrilled for Chad and the boys, and I'm glad that they are happy and well-adjusted (and rich), but their story just isn't very compelling, especially when you whitewash the one plot point that would have provided at least a little tension.
Fans will probably love this (the fan I watched this with -- who took me to a fun Nickelback concert in 2017 -- did), but most others are likely to roll their eyes and possibly ratchet up a little hate for these talented choirboys. I'm sure Canada is proud of them.
QUEEN OF THE DEUCE (B-minus) - This messy biography of a tough old broad who reigned during the New York City era of X-rated cinema mostly skips its most interesting topic in favor of bland analysis from her family, who executive-produced the film.
Chelly Wilson was a gruff grandmother who had survived Holocaust-era Greece and, without speaking a word of English early on, went from selling bags of peanuts on the streets of New York to owning multiple porn palaces in Manhattan that thrived in the 1960s and '70s. You might be curious about the lurid details of that grimy underworld; this movie won't satisfy that curiosity. An exploration of the true seediness of 42nd Street in the '70s is literally reduced to about a minute of air time in the final 10 minutes.
Otherwise, a good 20 minutes of the first half follows Wilson's odyssey as a barely closeted lesbian fleeing both a loveless marriage and the pogrom against the Jews before World War II. Students of 20th century Greek history might have the stamina for the extended foray; I didn't. Throw in a ton of childish animated re-enactments, and the first half really suffers.
Wilson's two daughters are the main protagonists who recount their mother's unique lifestyle and life choices with enthusiasm and good humor, along with two grandchildren whose appreciation for the old lady are more tempered by a generational awareness of the ills of capitalism and pornography. The daughters participated in the porn empire, along with one's husband, and by the end of this 78-minute film you get a strong sense that these timeworn family tales have had their edges smoothed and details elided to the point of unreliability.
The clips from various adult films of the era (Wilson even got into producing films at one point with titles like "Scarf of Mist Thigh of Satin") are essentially PG-13 presentations (one talking head notes that some of the films could easily be shown on afternoon TV these days alongside soap operas). Now three decades after Wilson's death, enough (too much?) time has passed, such that her life is reduced to a bland gloss, a watered-down hero's journey by a determined grandma, all of it smothered in sepia.
BONUS TRACK
OK, I'm a sucker for Nickelback's "Rockstar," so here you go:
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