Madonna: Truth or Dare Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

Madonna: Truth or Dare Blu-ray Movie Review

Madonna and child: her ego.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 26, 2012

Is Madonna irrelevant? Despite the Material Girl’s penchant for self-promotion, signs are not especially encouraging for the once and future superstar, especially in this post-Lady Gaga age. While seemingly entire PR firms are kept solvent in pushes for this or that Madonna project, Ms. Ciccone just doesn’t really seem to be front page news anymore. Her newest album MDNA hasn’t raised much ruckus, either yay or nay (critical opinion seems basically evenly split among positive and negative thus far), her latest film W/E was roundly derided by critics and even Madonna’s Super Bowl halftime performance became “big” news when supposed supporting act M.I.A. flipped off the stadium audience and several billion people who had tuned in around the world. But never count Madonna out, and chances are she’ll be around at least attempting to generate headlines for as long as she’s drawing breath. Things were at least a little different back in the early nineties, at least with regard to Madonna’s music career, which wasn’t yet beset with a newer generation’s attempts to ape her iconic image and super slick dance moves. To not exactly coin a phrase, Madonna was “hot stuff” in that era, having achieved something akin to artistic maturity with True Blue, her third studio album, and then moving on to Like a Prayer and I’m Breathless, made to tie in to her role in Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy. In what must go down as one of the oddest matchups in screen history, Madonna also premiered what turned out to be that year’s Academy Award winner for Best Song, “Sooner or Later”, by none other than Broadway’s golden boy of music and lyrics, Stephen Sondheim. Madonna had perfected the art of self- promotion to such a degree that it was almost easier to discuss what evening entertainment “news” program didn’t feature at least one story about here, rather than trying to enumerate the incredibly profligate number of segments she generated. Into this nonstop fray of Madonna-this and Madonna-that came Madonna: Truth or Dare, the Material Girl’s attempt at confessional documentary making. It’s indicative of just how much product Madonna was moving in those days that the documentary was for quite a while after its release the highest grossing film in that genre.

Members of the Writers Guild of America have been up in arms for years about the advent of “reality television”, arguing (probably quite rightly) that these supposed “real” off the cuff series are more scripted than anyone ever imagines, though no one gets (or in fact claims) credit. That same feeling pervades Madonna: Truth or Dare, simply by dint of the fact that Madonna and everyone else is so aware the cameras are rolling and footage is being shot. Everyone plays to the lens, despite passing attempts to make it seem like everyday banter, and it gives the entire documentary a glistening veneer that is shiny and smooth, but which keeps the viewer from actually touching what’s underneath. Some have posed a question about Truth or Dare, asking “Is this the real Madonna?” Perhaps a more salient query would be, “Is there a ‘real’ Madonna?”

A perfect example of this faux reality comes early in the film when Madonna turns to off screen director Alek Keshishian and laments that he’s about to film her being adjusted by her chiropractor. “Alek, no,” she whines in a sing-songy complaining tone of voice, after which we immediately get a scene of—you guessed it—Madonna being adjusted by her chiropractor. Keshishian at least has the humor to mix in a huge crack from Madonna’s stage show (which he cuts to immediately) in place of what would have hopefully been the somewhat more demure sound of her neck being brought into alignment.

Some of Madonna: Truth or Dare is simultaneously self-promotional but also revealing. While Madonna’s pseudo-Freudian examinations of her own psyche fall embarrassingly flat, her interactions with her father, whom she exhorts to come to her Detroit performance, have the ring of semi-truth about them, even if they also hint at a decades’ long subtext of estrangement. She’s not especially kind to a supposed childhood friend, but she turns on the charm with the parents of several of her dancers. (One of the real unforced, albeit incredibly brief, segments in this film features a couple of the dancers’ moms singing to themselves, everything from “Don’t Make Me Over” to “The Man I Love”. It’s a refreshing moment of unrehearsed “reality”.)

As if we didn't know it already, Madonna is shown to be an incredibly driven, demanding personality who knows what she wants and is out to get it, no matter what the cost. Her "Blond Ambition" tour, which Truth or Dare documents, is well named, and that selfsame ambition brings her into conflict with everyone from sound engineers to tour managers to her then-lover Warren Beatty, who walks away from the "reality" of the omnipresent cameras, deeming Madonna's attempts to film her existence "insane".

All of this is not to say Madonna: Truth or Dare isn’t entertaining and enjoyable, for it most certainly is. But is it “reality”? Hardly. Keshishian makes the none-too-subtle point of filming the confessional backstage moments in grainy black and white, while the onstage performance sequences are in glossy color, but is that perhaps unintentionally ironic? In the topsy turvy world of pop superstardom, does life only erupt into Technicolor brilliance when it’s onstage? Does that make everything else somehow drab and less than fulfilling? That might be the most “real” element of Madonna: Truth or Dare, delivered subliminally without the star’s input or foreknowledge.

Madonna: Truth or Dare Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Madonna: Truth or Dare is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate and Miramax with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. As mentioned above in the main body of the review (and show in the screencaps included with the review), director Alek Keshishian filmed the documentary both in black and white, which is "grained up" and was evidently shot in 16mm, and shot the performance footage in glossy color, which on at least a couple of occasions has the flat, textureless look of video (though it's all evidently 35mm). As such, talking about consistent contrast or decent black levels with regard to the black and white footage is slightly misleading, as contrast has obviously been pushed at times and some of the film has slightly effulgent, glowing whites as a result. Fine detail isn't exceptional in the black and white segments, but is certainly acceptable and no doubt reproduces how the film looked in its theatrical exhibition. The color footage offers a good deal more fine detail, though contrast is again a bit of an issue, especially with regard to shadow detail, which is negligible in several onstage sequences. Close-ups fare best in the both the black and white and color segments, and the good news is Madonna: Truth or Dare is full of them.

Madonna: Truth or Dare Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Madonna: Truth or Dare's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is a curiously schizoid experience, due to the bifurcated nature of the documentary itself. The confessional backstage moments are obviously quieter and provide little opportunity for either immersion or any "wow" factor in terms of the audio, but once the documentary moves onstage, all bets are off, and we have a stupendous sounding mix that features great surround activity and amazing fidelity, especially with regard to the bass heavy thumping ambience of several of the tunes Madonna performs. Balance during the performance sequences is rather good, all things considered, with Madonna's voice well prioritized and crowd sounds present, but not overwhelming.

Madonna: Truth or Dare Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Theatrical Trailer 1 (SD; 2:11)


• Theatrical Trailer 2 (SD; 1:20)

Madonna: Truth or Dare Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

What would a filmmaker like D.A. Pennebaker have made out of Madonna: Truth or Dare? The problem with being in the orbit of a solar presence as gravitational as the Material Girl is that movement is preordained, and that might have been part of the problem the Alek Keshishian encountered when attempting to chip beneath the steely façade of its subject and get to something approaching the putative "truth". Taken on one level, Truth or Dare is laughable in terms of what it supposedly "reveals". Taken on another level, it probably reveals way more than Madonna ever intended in terms of her seeming compulsion to craft an image of how she wants the world to think of her (and, let's face it, Madonna obviously does want the world to think of her). The best parts of this piece are the concert moments, where the "real" Madonna (for want of a better term) is let loose in furious abandon, and her primal energy and charisma are in full force. This Blu-ray offers good video and fantastic sound, but supplements are negligible (somewhat surprising since initial reports indicated a Special Edition for this title). For Madonna fans, this is a no- brainer; others may want to consider a rental.