My wife and I decided to stream this on Amazon. We had to pay ~$5 to see it.
Generally we liked it. It was a little bit different than I expected. It was basically more a concert than an extended music video. It seemed relatively long. Each song was introduced with a bit of an explanation of what it was about combined with some long time Bruce philosophical comments. The general comments are some you'd gotten over the years on talk shows, covered a bit more in his Broadway show, and most fully explored in his autobiography. In general, they were good, but they could come across as a bit cliche or cornball in this show, if you hadn't followed Bruce over the years (and realized he tended to make them). They were not political. He did invoke God a few times, which caused my wife to ask about his religious beliefs (I would characterize Bruce as an agnostic, who is respectful of other's beliefs, but still uses God as a concept in his understanding of human behavior and the world).
My wife said the early part of the album was "Life Sucks and then you Die..." but she felt it got better as it went along. I though it was far more California centric than I had expected. It got close to insipid at times (how many times can you show a old man driving a not quite as old El Camino in the scrubs?). I liked his introductions of the songs, it was very much IMO a concept album. Yeah, Bruce can string some lyrics together, I though it pretty funny he worked the "little blue pill" into one song... but this guy wrote "Blinded by the Light..."
Bruce alluded to some of his failings, since she hadn't read his book, or followed much about him over the years, I had to explain them.
My wife also commented that she had been seeing lot of turning 70 celebrities doing all sorts of weird philosophical stuff. She guessed they are realizing that they are near the end of life and living on borrowed time (aren't we all? but after 70 one is more than before).
One other weird one was he introduced one of his songs by invoking Jimmy Webb, which I wasn't sure I followed it... Not sure which Jimmy Webb song he was talking about... I didn't think the album or show was over produced even if he had a big orchestra. He might have had a glockenspiel in there somewhere, but I don't know if I can tell that. One song had an accordion which got a little annoying.
Overall, the cinematography was very good. It was a good album, not his best. Not his worst. I'd probably just listen to the album after this (don't need all the extra time the other stuff took).
I also liked his closing song. It was one I hadn't expected. I liked his version, better than Glen Campbell's
, but the one time I had a chance to see them I wouldn't pay the ticket price because I was so fed up with his hypocrisy. My frustrations have long faded with him though as he is one of those guys who walks the walk.
