# Barenaked in America (1999)

### reviewed by
Scott Renshaw

BARENAKED IN AMERICA (Shooting Gallery) Featuring: Ed Robertson, Steven Page, Tyler Stewart, Jim Creggan, Kevin Hearn, Chris Brown. Director: Jason Priestley. MPAA Rating: Unrated (could be PG-13 for brief nudity, profanity) Running Time: 89 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.

I say this as a longtime fan of Barenaked Ladies, someone who was listening to their music years before they became an arena act: There was no good reason for Jason Priestley to make a documentary about the band, at least not the documentary he made. BARENAKED IN AMERICA is actor-turned-auteur Priestley's open fan letter to his countrymen, the Toronto quintet that hit big Stateside in 1998 with the multi-platinum album "Stunt" and its #1 nonsense-rap single "One Week." The film follows the band -- guitarist/vocalist Ed Robertson, vocalist Steve Page, drummer Tyler Steward, bassist Jim Creggan and keyboardist Chris Brown -- on their first U.S. tour after becoming big-time headliners. They're coping with the absence of regular keyboardist Kevin Hearn, who is undergoing treatment for leukemia, but mostly they are shown handling their nascent fame with grins and self-effacing humor.

That, unfortunately, is what prevents BARENAKED IN AMERICA from being a particularly interesting film experience. The Ladies are presented by Priestley as a group of nice, intelligent guys having loads of fun entertaining their fans, almost completely unfazed by their sudden notoriety in America. Great stuff for a People magazine profile; not so much for a feature documentary. Chalk it up to bad luck, perhaps, but the time frame for Priestley's profile is all wrong. As the film begins, "One Week" has already become a hit, Hearn has already been diagnosed and the high-profile tour is already underway. Start the story a few months earlier, and you may have something: A hard-working bunch of decent guys swooping back and forth between the highest highs and the lowest lows. As it actually unfolds, BARENAKED IN AMERICA is utterly bereft of drama.

Which is not to say that it's utterly bereft of entertainment. Even viewers who are not BNL devotees will find it hard to deny the energetic appeal of their stage shows, which turn into rowdy audience-participation improvisations. The performance footage includes old and new song favorites, as well as the ad-lib raps composed by Page and Robertson while their bandmates try to lay down an accompanying rhythm behind them. Few popular music acts of the day would make better subjects for a straight-ahead concert film; the Ladies, as their manager notes in an interview, are pure entertainers whose shows are singular experiences.

Unfortunately, BARENAKED IN AMERICA isn't a straight-ahead concert film. It's not really clear exactly what Priestley wants it to be, in fact. There are token bits of archival footage, but not enough to provide a sense of where the Ladies came from. There are moments of backstage and person-on-the-street cavorting, but not enough to make the film a showcase for the band members' off-stage charm. And there are token glimpses of the easy-going fellows putting their feet down on business decisions (like their dissatisfaction with a video for their follow-up single "It's All Been Done"), but they feel completely incongruous with most of the film pitched lighter than air.

Occasionally Priestley takes an off-beat angle, like letting both fans and detractors of the band speak their minds after hearing BNL music. Far more often, he simply turns on his camera like a buddy of the band making a home movie. These guys were never going to yield a SPINAL TAP-like story of internal meltdown and rampant ego; it would have taken a much more skilled documentarian and a much more precise time frame to make a Barenaked Ladies film soar. The band itself deserves the attention, because talented pop musicians and songwriters with a zeal for showmanship are in too short supply to dismiss them as a novelty act. If anything positive comes from BARENAKED IN AMERICA, it might be encouraging more people to know the band from its live shows. That's the Barenaked experience that should be recorded for posterity.

         On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 bare un-necessaries:  5.

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