Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This film is exactly what you want, plus a little less, plus a little too much more. It's being marketed as a documentary, not a concert film. And the reason for that will be apparent when you watch it. For those who saw Roger's "The Wall Live" tour and hope to re-live that experience with this film, you will probably be only partially satisfied. This is not a straightforward filmed document of the live show. Rather it is a visual essay of Roger's personal grief interspersed between extended segments of the live show. Sometimes the camera faces the stage and gives you the audience POV, sometimes the camera is on the stage in and around the band members, and sometimes the camera lingers on the audience members -- far too often and for far too long, if you ask me. *An interesting thing about some of the audience footage -- most of the fans sing along (of course), but much of the film was shot in Canada where English is not the sole primary language. You have non-native-English speakers mouthing the words and you can see the odd contortions their mouths make trying to make the "unusual" sounds. With all due respect to Roger Waters and his personal journey to come to terms with his grief over losing his father in WWII, I believe the off-stage travelogue takes up far too much screen time. It interrupts the flow of the concert. Make no mistake -- this film is about Roger, not the live concert. Fans of "The Wall" don't necessarily need or want to delve so deeply into the nuts and bolts of what pains Roger Waters personally. After 35 years of listening to the album, watching the 1982 film, and reading about the concept behind them, we get it already. At the end of the day, I think most of us just enjoy the music and bring our own joys and demons to the message behind it. But with this too-personal film, we are asked to experience it primarily on HIS level, not our own. Not gonna lie: I wanted a straight-forward filmed souvenir of the concert experience I enjoyed the three times I saw the show live. When I read last year that the eventual release on home video would include snippets of Roger's travels on the healing road, I had no idea there would be so many of them and take up so much time. Granted, without those extra segments the concert video would run pretty short -- pretty much just the length of the album. So I guess I can live with a LITTLE padding here and there. But in my opinion it is just too much and too frequent. The concert itself has an intermission. So if Roger needed to include his travel videos in the film, perhaps he could have opened the movie with a short segment, added some more during the break in the concert, and then tacked on some at the end as a coda. Instead, the movie includes several more breaks in the action in addition to those. As for Roger's travelogue video: so we don't have to listen to him muttering to himself or an extended voice-over, he takes one of his buddies along for the ride with him for much of the trip. So we get to listen to them converse about things that are of utmost importance to them but not necessarily for the average Pink Floyd fan who just wants to relive the concert (or see it for the first time). It's almost as if the concert itself is secondary, an afterthought. The concert itself, if you managed to see it in person, was a visual spectacle. I saw it three times and I enjoyed it from the middle of the arena more than I did when my ticket was in the 3rd row. The stage and visuals are so large and magnificent that one simply must be positioned a sufficient distance from the stage to take it all in. Much of the magic is lost when you're too close to the stage. For home viewing, one wants the optimum vantage point. But you only get a taste of that in this film. Especially lacking is the benefit of a good vantage point for the interesting stage visuals during "Empty Spaces", "The Last Few Bricks", "One of My Turns/Don't Leave Me Now" and "Hey You". And the film cuts away from the "money shot" in "Empty Spaces" that we're all familiar with from Gerald Scarfe's animation. The film is already rated "R", so I don't understand the coyness. So bear in mind that this film was not designed with the average fan in mind. It was designed to be a cathartic experience for Roger and we have just been invited to tag along. Is it worth watching? Absolutely. No question. Is it a little more than you bargained for? Perhaps. In short (or is it too late for short?): if you didn't see the tour in person, this documentary will give you a less-than-ideal view of what you missed. If you DID attend the tour, this documentary will give you a less-than-ideal souvenir of the show. One of the promised bonus features is a clip from the tour when David Gilmour guested on "Comfortably Numb". If it's the same performance as his guest appearance in London at the O2 arena [edit: it is], bear in mind that Gilmour flubbed the lyrics and his guitar solo was rather unremarkable. Embarrassing for Gilmour, but probably satisfying for Waters. I suppose that in time I might get past my disappointment that this isn't a straight-forward concert film and instead enjoy and appreciate this documentary film for what it is: a portrait of a man's catharsis set against the background of a large-scale artistic endeavor. In fact I hope I will. This is a gorgeously-shot film no matter how you perceive it. But still believe the non-concert narrative could have used a little tightening. Among the bonus goodies (at least on the Blu-ray) are time lapse videos of the stage being set up in Greece and South America. It's interesting to see how long it actually took to do it. And there are nearly 2 dozen Facebook videos of varying lengths featuring various aspects of staging the show and/or Roger's comments about celebrity, culture, etc. Those are worth a look, for sure. No denying the stage show was awesome and a spectacular logistical achievement. But you won't get an uninterrupted viewing of the concert experience, if that's what you are hoping for.