Delayed Reaction: The Last Waltz

The Pitch: Someone needs to document the farewell show of everyone's 5th or 6th favorite band to come out of the 60s who they tend to forget about.

A concert movie about The Band's final show.

Stop Making Sense set the bar too high. At least for that era. That movie is so damn simple and watchable. The Talking Heads put on one hell of a show and director Jonathan Demme mostly stayed out of their way. Even though I think I like The Band a little better than The Talking Heads, The Last Waltz was nowhere near as engaging. I found the interview segments between songs kind of dull at their best or self-congratulatory at their worst. None of the performances sucked me in either.

I haven't watched nearly enough concert documentaries to really say what does and doesn't work about them. I know I liked Stop Making Sense, which was just performances and nothing else. I thought the best parts of This Is It were the in between moments following Michael Jackson though. So, I'm not sure what the better mix and style for The Last Waltz would be, but as is, I wasn't the impressed by it. Then again, it had them singing "The Weight" and the Joni Mitchell performance was pretty good, so I got what I should've expected.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend