The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story

The other reviews here are odd. I found this documentary to be informative and super interesting. Obviously it is going to be a little biased, like every documentary is. However, it is also obvious that this is not just a shot at revenge for the boy banders that speak, but more of a warning. Plus, the scope of the fraudulent activities go way past just the boy bands and are well covered and explained within the film. I was left wondering if I had missed something at some points but overall it was well worth watching. These kinds of stories are fascinating to me because they are things you would think everyone should know about, yet until a documentary like this comes out most people are oblivious and there are lots of life lessons to be learned in events like these.

At some point you get the feeling one of his artist must have produced this and low and behold....Lance Bass. Well, what was mentioned very quickly was that Mr. Pearlman Bought a talent agency (who he un knowingly) was under investigation and that when the FBI starts spying on him etc. Because he bought a company that had a bad track record.

I had no clue how much of a scam artist Lou Pearlman was. I always assumed he just dealt with music. It was a very sad story. It was put together really well.

The Boy Bands were basically, now that we get to really see what their only real talent was, barbershop quartets/quintets with drum machines manufacturing songs written by professionals... musicians other than the boys themselves, who were handed big deals but, so it seems in the case of The Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, their deals weren't big enough...

Making the most intriguing aspect take place during the first part in which we learn of the rise of these two very famous groups (on the heels of New Kids on the BLock) alongside their founding manager Lou Pearlman, who made money with blimps, or airplanes, or something...

It's after both boy bands sue the central figure Pearlman does the documentary get a bit dry and uninteresting, mainly because the leftover groups that Pearlman created never made any kind of lasting impression... in fact, they weren't even worthy enough to make fun of, and hardly even register on the pop culture conscience...

Since this was produced by Lance Bass, there should have been more info centering on those two big bands and Pearlman's connection with them, and then leave the last half of the third/final episode about all the people he ripped off instead of that stuff being dragged through one and a half episodes...

Either way, this wasn't a bad doc, and filled the time nicely... but didn't stick to the things that people would actually care (or know) about.

I enjoyed it, the story was cohesive, there was a diverse group of people talking about what happened, it kept me engaged. This things need to be told so everybody can protect themselves in this kind of situation.