briled-37531

Jimmy page has always been something of a (rightful) control freak when it comes to his 'baby', Led Zeppelin; and while their 12 year output is largely untarnished, there have been a few missteps following the death of drummer John Bonham in 1980, like the ill-fated Live Aid reunion in 1985, so it's no surprise he, along with Plant and Jones, were initially a little tentative about a proposed 'official' documentary.

On one hand, 'Becoming Led Zeppelin' does live up to its title. This is not a band chronology, but the how and why of it all coming together, from their post-war childhoods to becoming infatuated with American blues, r&b, jazz, and rock music as teenagers. While it doesn't touch on every single influence, there is enough of an overview to get the cultural picture. All three surviving members provide an adequate narrative through new interviews. Although it's Page who is the most lucid and engaged, Plant and Jones are also informative, witty and affable.

Of course, the music does speak for itself, and is given plenty of screen time to do that, presenting live clips of complete songs with original audio. It would be easy to complain that most of these clips were released in 2003 on the 'Led Zeppelin Live' DVD, but they definitely benefit from the Imax treatment. One nice surprise, though, was the inclusion of unreleased footage from the Fillmore West, San Francisco in 1969, among others.

It all seems to add up to an engaging cohesive story, that is, until the director gets a case of montage fever and decides to recycle clips and songs we've already seen, in a ham-fisted way more than a few times, which just comes off as filler, and really cheapens the overall tone of the film.

So, does this film actually do justice to the mighty Zeppelin? It does accomplish its objective in cohesively covering the early years, and keeps us engaged with interviews, unseen clips and photos, but somehow manages to stray without a satisfactory conclusion. Still, I'm glad it exists, but could use a re-edit.

Maybe I'm just getting old, but after reading the comic book and watching the tv cartoon series since the 70's, I found much of this film to be somewhat cringe-worthy in the dialogue department. The plot and basic execution was decent enough, as were the action sequences, but I think this film needs a serious editing job to remove much of the hyper-caffeinated neurotic 'comedy' blather. I guess with Disnee at the helm, the days of darker storytelling are over, and everything has to be 'light' and 'springy'.

Although not perfect, Sam Raimi's original trilogy found a decent balance between the light and dark, as did the next two 'Amazing Spider-Man' films, but I really feel the newer ones (especially the latest) are too full of slapdash comedy that offsets the darker and cooler undertones of the film and creates a kind of schizophrenic awkward storytelling. Maybe I'm just old and humorless.