Directed by Edgar Wright
Rated R for language
Runtime: 2 hours 15 minutes
In theaters June 18

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, The Red Herring

While I am not a Sparks fan, as a Rush devotee, I am no stranger to bands with large cult followings. Nor am I a stranger to documentaries chronicling these cult bands. Rush got their own in 2010, with Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage. Both that film and The Sparks Brothers follow the career of their subject tracing their origins all the way through the present day. For me, the parts of Beyond the Lighted Stage I enjoyed most were hearing stories about the band that predated my birth, like KISS commenting on the tour where Rush opened for them and watched science fiction movies on cable instead of partying with groupies. Even the shortest version of that anecdote tells you a lot about the members of Rush, but after spending over two hours learning about Sparks, I get the sense that the brothers Mael prefer an air of mystery. 

Not that I blame them. Ron and Russell Mael are absolutely gifted musicians and songwriters. Having an unknowableness surrounding them supports the feel of their music, which is both pop-driven and artful, heartfelt and acerbic. The Sparks Brothers starts with their childhood in California, which does reveal something about their origins, but ultimately their process, their drive, and their outlook on their own careers remains opaque. My biggest takeaway was going back to the work of Giorgio Moroder (previously crossing my path in Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories album in 2013) and checking out his collaboration with Sparks in the late 1970s. 

Ultimately, the film feels like meeting a Sparks fan at a bar. They turn the conversation toward Sparks, and then argue at you that they are an overlooked yet supremely influential band. They regale you with stories about their seeming near-successes, and how the band continually seemed to snatch obscurity from the clutches of fame. At best, you nod politely, you promise to look them up on Spotify, and go about your life. Director Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Shaun of the Dead) is in full on fan mode, and has brought a litany of other fans with clout to help make his case. Ranging from Beck to Patton Oswalt to Mike Myers, these celebrities rarely add anything insightful other than sharing their love. If I were a Sparks fan, maybe that would be enough to make me feel validated–there’s no shame in that! However, as someone who casually enjoys the band from time to time, The Sparks Brothers felt like it was too long to be an introduction to the band, but not deep enough to warrant the time spent with it. 

That isn’t to suggest that the film isn’t well put together. Wright deploys some fantastic archival footage, new interviews with Ron and Russell, animation, to tell the story of Sparks. The editing makes the film feel well-paced and enjoyable to watch. Seeing footage from the FFS tour–where Sparks collaborated with Franz Ferdinand–of which I attended the Philly show, definitely hit me with nostalgia for something that feels like a lifetime ago despite it only being 6 years. But again, it all amounts to feeling like I’m sat across from a kindergartener monologuing about dinosaurs. I like dinosaurs, but not the way I did when I was 5. Sometimes you’re the obsessive child, sometimes you’re the polite adult, I suppose, and The Sparks Brothers had me firmly in the latter position.