JewessU

Luckily it was only 77 minutes. This documentary on Liverpool, UK, during the 20th century had potential, but it was like watching a college student's project instead of the work of a 64 year old man. The archival footage was interesting, but the negative, cynical poetry of TS Eliot and James Joyce was very depressing and dark. Here is footage of smiling beautiful Brits going about life and being happy with friends and family, and happy playing children, despite living in a poor city, and the heavy dressing poetry being read over it was ridiculous. Try living in a tough, diverse American urban center, with rampant crime & conflict and then you'll have something to complain about. The poetry was hard to understand too, and no captions available. It is pretentious to prove you are literate by using Joyce or Eliot's words (or whoever the poems were by - there was no attribution), despite them being very whiny, cynical, negative and depressing.

It was boring to me and to my male friend. We didn't think it was cute or clever to call Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, 'Betty and Phil" and to be so critical of the Royal pomp & pageantry while adoring Hollywood glitter and pomp. The commentary was unwise, immature, cynical and depressing. The special features were BORING too. Everyone is kissing butt of the director because of past work, but this movie was like a POV show on PBS.

The director could have focused on any number of beautiful things about life in Liverpool, including the beauty of the townspeople, instead of the depressing drone of complaints. I recommend to miss it or watch the footage with the sound off. One other point: in the special features they mention more than once that the song The Folks Who Live on the Hill was "BY" Peggy Lee. She sang it, but it was written "BY" Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern.