I've been watching a lot of DVD extra features lately and one of the things that I have found that almost all of them have in common is that nearly all of them have distantly lower ratings on the IMDb than they deserve. Consider, for example, the three documentaries included on the Vista Series of The Sixth Sense, which are all outstanding documentaries but which all received collective ratings of something like 3 out of 10, which is absolutely ridiculous.
This documentary is all of 8 minutes long, I find it hard to believe that people were upset that they just wasted 8 minutes of their life watching it, especially when it does, in fact, give some pretty interesting insights into the motivations of one of the most successful producers of all time (although certainly not the best). I recently watched an old Three Stooges short comedy called The Brideless Groom, the IMDb comments about which were unanimously glowing, despite the fact that the film was tepid and boring. Just like automatic praise for mediocre films damages the authenticity of the truly great films, this seemingly arbitrary lack of respect for interesting introspectives like Conversations with Jerry Bruckheimer simply dilute the stock in which movie-goers can put into the opinions of IMDb users.
I have a healthy dislike of the vast majority of Bruckheimer's work. His films are crowd-pleasers but not the way that Spielberg's movies are. He goes for universal appeal but at the expense of the quality of the story that he is telling and the film that he is making, using such methods as heavily structured and contrived plots and, most damaging, by forcing cloying romantic subplots into films which have no room or need for them. Armageddon is an example of a film that had no room, and Pearl Harbor is a film that had no need. Coyote Ugly was one of the few that had no reason for being made in the first place, and while I'm at it, I should admit that to me, The Rock (while also exploitative and contrived) is simply pure entertainment.
In this short documentary, Bruckheimer talks about some of his experiences in film-making and some of the people that he has worked with, talking about his motivations and goals, as well as the things that he finds rewarding about the entire process, like seeing an audience laugh and cry and simply be entertained. This is the kind of thing that makes me take pause about some of the harsh things that I have said and written about his films, although only long enough really to make me remember that I was right. Bruckheimer is a respectable man, but respectability does not equal great films, nor does having brought in a gross total of $11 billion over your career. As Sidney Lumet notes, commercial success does not denote great film.
Clearly, even though I do not have the highest respect for many of Bruckheimer's films, I am certainly able to look past my low opinion of them and enjoy a look at the motivations of one of the most powerful men involved in their creation. It is indeed interesting to see what motivated someone who came up with something that I so wholeheartedly disagree with, which I think is something to keep in mind when rating something like this on the IMDb. I can certainly understand people being unimpressed with something like Gone in 60 Seconds or Coyote Ugly, but this conversational documentary is not a 1 out or 10 by any stretch of the imagination.
It is, unfortunately, easier to watch and more enjoyable than many of Bruckheimer's films.
