The Go-Go's Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

The Go-Go's Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 27, 2021

Here’s a question for any of you who may be what might be called “casual” fans of The Go Go’s, without any “inside” knowledge as to the band’s background and formation: would you consider them to be an integral part of the punk movement? In that regard, it’s kind of interesting to peruse some contemporary reviews or other press coverage of the band in their first rush of success in the United States when their debut album Beauty and the Beat came out in 1981, as well as current day assessments of the band’s history and their supposed “genre”, because a lot of them mention “new wave” or “pop” and, yes, even “rock” as apt descriptions, but the “punk” element can tend to be brought up only in passing, and then at least at times in almost disparaging terms, with an unmistakable subtext that The Go-Go's were able to "evolve" past that "rudimentary" style. The amiable documentary The Go-Go’s may in fact help both casual and ardent fans of the group reassess not only where the band “came from”, both literally and figuratively and not just necessarily with regard to a potentially surprising genesis in Los Angeles' fledgling punk scene, but also what they achieved in what might churlishly be called their heyday as well. The documentary is probably not going to be overly revelatory for those who are ardent fans of The Go-Go's, but with a glut of often confessional interviews and a lot of really fun (and sometimes funny) archival footage, The Go-Go's paints a memorable portrait of the first "girl band" who wrote their own material and played their own instruments to get to the top of the American charts.

There's some interesting intercutting in this piece where archival moments are contrasted with contemporary interviews, and some of the "behind the music" interactions that ensue can be rather intriguing, especially with regard to some former members of The Go-Go's who either left or were jettisoned at some point. If certain things are perhaps overly elided at times, this is definitely a "warts and all" examination of both the band as a whole and the individuals in it, and that doesn't just pertain to the individuals as band members. For example, Jane Wiedlin openly discusses her unhappy childhood and attempts at suicide.

However, for all the perceived trauma and tribulation the band faced (including some ugly early interactions with skinheads in the audience), what The Go-Go's continually celebrates is the steeliness of the women, both the ones in the band and also with regard to their manager Ginger Canzonieri. All of them make perfectly clear that what they feel is one of their greatest accomplishments was not being a pre-packaged "product" supervised by some male "Svengali", as one of them puts it. In fact, one of the kind of interesting if subliminal elements to The Go- Go's is how it tends to feature female talking heads in greater supply than male.

As with so many show business success stories, there's both the often repeated aspect of being thought of as an "overnight sensation", whether or not any effort was put into that label, but also the equally familiar story that "happily ever after" suddenly starts to go sour very quickly in the glare of the public spotlight. Here is where The Go-Go's may actually surprise at least some fans, in terms of the roiling interpersonal dramas that unfolded with various band members at times. Some of the band's internecine conflicts, which at least at times spilled into contentious litigation, will (again) probably be relatively well known to diehard fans, but The Go-Go's tends to peel back the layers to reveal some of the raw human emotions underlying some of the various maneuvers by both current and former band members.

What becomes more and more evident as the contemporary interviews unfold is how self aware the women at least have become, and some might argue always were, at least to a degree. It's kind of interesting to contrast their "self made" status with another woman who chafed at being professionally "handled" by males, as is revealed at least tangentially in Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice. There's a toughness in some of these interviews as a result (Gina Schock in particular seems unlikely to suffer any fools gladly), but there's often also a surprising and rather refreshing vulnerability.

The Go-Go's Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Go-Go's is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Polygram and Universal Music with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer (often) in 1.78:1 (as can be seen in some of the screenshots accompanying this review, quite a bit of the archival video can be in narrower aspect ratios). This is a very appealing looking presentation in terms of the contemporary interview segments, all of which boast typically excellent detail levels and a nicely natural looking palette. Talking head segments in and of themselves probably don't inherently offer huge opportunities for astounding fine detail levels, but things look agreeably sharp and precise in all of the contemporary footage. The archival footage is another matter altogether, which is typically the way a lot of these efforts culled from different sources tend to look. Some of the early video coverage of the band is fuzzy, shoddy and littered with various anomalies, but other (sometimes brief) snippets, like footage of the band in England, can look at least relatively better. The archival footage does show pretty wide variances in clarity and palette suffusion.

The Go-Go's Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Go-Go's features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 tracks (the back cover incorrectly states that there's a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track). This is another pretty predicable effort in terms of the variances between the stereo and surround tracks, since this is yet another talking head fest with music used interstitially, rather than vice versa. As a result, while the surround track does noticeably open up the music, there's only so much music that is offered, and often in relatively brief moments. All of the interview segments sounded pretty much the same as I toggled between the surround and stereo tracks. Optional English subtitles are available.

The Go-Go's Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements included on the Blu-ray disc. A DVD copy is also included, and perhaps in homage to the era of the band's greatest renown, this comes packaged in a kind of retro looking DVD sized keepcase.

The Go-Go's Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

My wife was a huge Go-Go's fan back in the day and was overjoyed to see this title in my review queue, and as a representative of this band's fan base, judging by her response to The Go-Go's, I'd say chances are other fans are really going to love this piece. It's reflective and rather insightful without being pretentious or overly self involved, and there's a really nice balance between the many "players" (in both senses of that word). The band has obviously had their fair share of career ups and personal downs, and it's treated generally very well in this appealing documentary. This is another piece that features a lot of contemporary footage intercut with a wealth of archival video, and so quality variances should be expected. It would have been nice to have had some kind of supplemental material included here, but otherwise The Go-Go's comes Recommended.