Bad Company Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Bad Company Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 4, 2020

For readers of this review who are old enough to remember television marketers of music like K-Tel, the phrase “but, wait, you also get. . .” may come to mind as Bad Company: The Official Authorized 40th Anniversary Documentary plays out, since this engaging if somewhat predictable trip down memory lane also includes copious information about two other bands that played into the ultimate formation of Bad Company, namely Free and Mott the Hoople. For those who know the genesis (sorry) of this legendary British band, the fact that there's not a ton of information about King Crimson may come as a surprise, but former King Crimson bandmate Boz Burrell, who was Bad Company's bassist but who sadly passed away in 2006 at the relatively young age of 60 (after a life perhaps addled by too much of that vaunted trifecta of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll), does get remembered with some fondness by Bad Company's three surviving members, Paul Rodgers, Simon Kirke and Mick Ralphs, all of whom are on hand here (together and separately) providing quite a bit of interview material.

It’s probably understandable why Bad Company: The Official Authorized 40th Anniversary Documentary spends a good, long while actually documenting Free, since that band featured Rodgers and Kirke. But that said, there are a few curious elisions in this piece, including a kind of passing comment that the breakup of Free actually contributed to the death of Paul Kossoff. In fact, the breakup of Free seemed to also hit Rodgers and Kirke pretty hard as well, but they (at least according to them) were able to rebound more easily than Kossoff was evidently able to.

While each of the three surviving members of Bad Company give some passing anecdotal information about their formative years and playing low paying (if they paid at all) gigs in village bars and halls, there’s actually less of the hardscrabble climb that many other “behind the music” documentaries tend to describe. In fact, the documentary kind of glosses over the fact that Free’s albums weren’t huge hits until “All Right Now” stormed the charts, and by the time Bad Company formed and had recorded its first album, there really weren’t any major career problems that accrued. Part of this was probably due to the management of industry legend Peter Grant, who is featured here quite a bit, both courtesy of some fun archival video and stills, but more importantly with a variety of often interesting anecdotes relayed by the band members.

As such, Bad Company: The Official Authorized 40th Anniversary Documentary has a decided lack of the kind of angst which regularly fills this type of retrospective, though there is some subtext of people making "life choices" in terms of sobriety that ultimately did lead to a bit of friction. That said, for anyone who either was or continues to be a fan of Bad Company, this is an appealing piece which should certainly be interesting due to its many interview segments with the surviving band members as well as a number of other relevant talking heads.

Note: This is really a propos of nothing too important or relevant, but Simon Kirke looks a lot like some actor whose name I can't come up at the moment (see screenshot 2). If anyone has a similar reaction, private message me with your thoughts.

Bad Company Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bad Company: The Official Authorized 40th Anniversary Documentary is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of FilmRise and MVD Visual with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer (mostly) in 1.78:1 (as tends to be the case with documentaries like this one, some archival video can be in narrower aspect ratios). FilmRise has made a rather nice transition into "pressed" Blu-ray discs, and the technical presentation here is generally excellent, with an understanding that, as alluded to before, there is some archival video here that definitely looks ragged, often appearing upscaled and in any case featuring fuzzy detail levels. The contemporary interview segments look sharp and well detailed, though the outdoor scenes with Mick Ralphs are just slightly hazy looking at times, perhaps due to shooting conditions.

Bad Company Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Several music-centric documentaries I've reviewed lately from various "niche" labels have kind of strangely only featured lossy audio, but commendably Bad Company: The Official Authorized 40th Anniversary Documentary features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track. That said, there's very little uninterrupted music in this piece, which consists by and large of talking head segments. In any case, the track here provides ample support for both spoken moments and the musical interludes which function mostly as interstitial elements. Even on some of the more ragged looking archival video the audio has made it through the gauntlet of age related wear and tear rather well, all things considered.

Bad Company Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements on this disc. This documentary evidently had a previous release from Universal Music several years ago (Bad Company: The Official 40th Anniversary Documentary) which wasn't reviewed, so I'm not sure if that version does have any supplementary content.

Bad Company Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This is a now somewhat dated piece which might be better entitled Bad Company: The Official Authorized 45th Anniversary Documentary, but that said, any fan of this band will most likely enjoy the interesting histories shared by Paul Rodgers, Simon Kirke and Mich Ralphs, along with several others who either worked with or (in the case of Burrell's widow) otherwise knew them. Technical merits are solid, with an understanding that this is another documentary which has been cobbled together from a variety of video sources, some of which can tend to look fairly ragged at times. Recommended.