The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 9, 2021

Virtually every major studio in Hollywood's so-called Golden Era, including the companies that became known as the "Big Five", was either founded or run (sometimes both) by Jewish immigrants or descendants of Jewish immigrants. Metro Goldwyn Mayer had Marcus Loew, Samuel Goldwyn and Louis B. Mayer. Universal Pictures had Carl Laemmle and his scion. Paramount Pictures had Adolph Zukor. Fox Films, later subsumed by 20th Century Fox, had William Fox. Columbia Pictures had Harry Cohn. RKO had at least the tangential involvement of David Sarnoff. And Warner Brothers had, well, the Warner brothers. Had Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus been born a generation or two earlier and ended up in the United States, they might very well have blended in with this august group in any number of ways, but they attained their own version of Hollywood's often elusive brass ring when they took over a faltering enterprise called Cannon Films in 1979. In a way, the Golan-Globus era of Cannon's output was almost comically similar to what, by the late seventies and then eighties, had become a largely dead vestige of the old way of doing things in Hollywood, meaning Cannon had what almost amounted to an assembly line of "product" that they churned out on a virtually weekly basis. That said, Cannon's stock in trade may have frankly had more in common with Golden Era "poverty row" studios like Monogram than with more prestigious outfits like the Big Five.

The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films almost subliminally ends up suggesting that Menahem Golan was the "face" of Cannon Films, while Yoran Globus was more of the backstage player making all the money side of things come together. There's some very brief quasi- biographical data the two offer, including a hint that Yoran may have been a bit of a problem child sent to Menahem for Menahem to keep an eye on, but the documentary might have benefited a bit more from offering fewer montages and more actual information about the family and the upbringings of the two men at the center of the story. There's actually relatively little information about them taking over the pre-existing Cannon, too, and instead the documentary tends to feature a glut of talking heads discussing the pair's almost obsessive quest to crank out as many films as possible, often under almost insane circumstances.

The insanity tends to ripple out in the dialectic between Goran and Globus, with some of the tangential talking heads here repeatedly mentioning how Globus would raise incredible sums of cash, only to have Goran burn through it without blinking an eye, since Goran was convinced one of the ways to achieve success was simply to flood the market with movies. There is arguably a bit of a glossing over The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films does with regard to the eventual breakdown of the pair's relationship and in fact of Cannon itself, but there's also a decent amount of "dirt", for those who want at least a bit of insight into some of the both smart and stupid decisions that were made.

There are any number of rather funny reminiscences on hand in the piece, with Jean-Claude Van Damme in particular offering a great anecdote about not just meeting Menahem, but then convincing him to let him be in a film. Other archival video offers moments with other iconic Cannon stars like Chuck Norris.

The documentary may not have a properly distanced perspective from its two prime subjects, but that may also be one of its strengths. There's some wonderful footage here, both of contemporary interviews, but also a wealth of archival video that captures the guys at the height of their power (my favorite piece of video is a fantastic little snippet of Goran's Seder being interrupted one year by a call from James Coburn's agent). What emerges is a rather loving portrait that might have benefited from a bit more of an edge, but which ends up making Goran and Globus as goofily unforgettable as some of their films.

The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of the MVD Rewind Collection, an imprint of MVD Visual, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is a typically pretty widely variant looking piece, as should be expected given the glut of archival source materials that have been utilized to cobble the story together. The interviews done specifically for the documentary understandably look the sharpest and offer the most consistent fine detail levels, but other relatively contemporary interviews also pop rather well, all things considered. The archival video is all over the place, quality wise, with quite a bit of it looking fairly ragged, as can perhaps be gleaned by some of the screenshots accompanying this review.

The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films features a workmanlike LPCM 2.0 track that effortlessly supports this talking head extravaganza. While there are occasional snippets from films, with their soundtracks (including some in Hebrew), the bulk of the piece is interviews and the like, and as such, there's not a lot of "wow" factor, but there's also very little to really complain about, either, with all spoken material delivered cleanly, albeit with an understanding that some of the speakers have pretty thick accents. In that regard, for those who like a little unintentional comedy, putting the subtitles on may provide a laugh or two, since whoever transcribed this had a hard time with some of the accents, with any number of typos resulting, including my own personal favorite, "Khan" in the place of "Cannes". One slight issue is that there are burned in subtitles for some of the Hebrew and other foreign languages, which occasionally "fight" with the optional English subtitles for space in the frame.

The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailers includes The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films (HD; 2:27) along with trailers for other releases from the MVD Rewind Collection.

Additionally, the keepcase holds a foldout mini-poster.

The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Kind of hilariously, given the whole Jewish aspect mentioned above, one of the first interviews with Menahem Golan included in The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films has him rather sweetly recounting making what sounded almost like "magic lantern" or "flip book" shows when he was a kid, only to have no one show up for the "screenings". The fact that Golan mentions he scheduled these events on Saturdays may provoke some to think, "Hey, Menahem, schmuck, it was Shabbat, what did you expect?" That's said in jest, of course, but The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films is an object lesson in what the power of movies can mean for individuals in both positive and negative ways. The documentary probably could have used a more incisive look at some of Cannon's more questionable financing issues, but as a personal portrait of Golan and Globus, it's often surprisingly warm hearted. Technical merits are generally solid, and with caveats noted, The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films comes Recommended.