Movie Review: Gigantic

"Its like being the world's tallest midget" is how Flansburgh describes They Might Be Giants fame at one point during the bands documentary, Gigantic. I was lucky enough to score tickets to the opening screening here in Seattle of the movie and was delighted with what I received for the price of admission. Of course having one of the John's, Flansburgh that is, plus the director AJ Schnack show up to the screening only added to the value. I am a fan of They Might Be Giants. The fact that I will have seen 26 films by the time that the Seattle Internal Film Festival is over also means that I am a fan of film too. Despite being a fan of film, this documentary could have been two hours worth of the TMBG's videos, or even two hours worth of staring at a black screen, and as long as they played some music I would have loved it.

The documentary is a solid mix of band history and irrelevant pieces (would you expect anything different?). While I can not say that I got a good history on how the two Jon's actually started playing together from the documentary, I did learn a lot about their early successes and the director did a wonderful job of putting together scenes from different periods to give the audience an idea about how the band's early years were. The documentary does reveal how "Dial A Song" got started after a biking messenger accident left Linnell unable to play. We even get to see some photos, complete with price tag, of the actual machine. Flansburgh talks for a bit about how personal "Dial A Song" is and the entire experience of getting to be one with the machine.

The documentary was shot in video and in places comes out a little grainy. Some of the concert scenes definitely show off some of the short comings of the medium (this is not Lucus style digital filming). Despite this the film had a fully packed house during its opening in Seattle and the theater had to turn away 150 people at the door.

The director mentioned that their last showing of the film at SXSW had similar sized crowds. Hopefully this will mean that some distributor will pick up the film so the more people will get a chance to see it. If you are lucky enough to live in one of the cities that it will be playing in, and you love the band's music I can easily recommend going to see it.

Comments

Does it count as first post...

[EvilFrog]

...if all of the previous posts are trolling?

Anyway, does anyone know how this is being distributed? I'm a big TMBG fan, but I don't know how I'll ever actually get to see this movie...

you suck!

[lo_fye]

all you people who post about linux instead of the topic are just silly billies. I love the johns. During the Sunshine Tour I got to see them in Michigan and happened to find out that afterwards they'd be doing an intimate show at the local Tower Records... price of admission: canned food for the needy. Off we went to the supermarket :) I got to sit on the floor of tower records, front row... and watch the Johns & band play. It was awesome. My friend Ben adn I even reached out pre-show and touched the coveted accordion. Whooooa. Been lovin their stuff for years now. John Henry made me scared that they may turn mainstream... but that fear passed as their lyrics stayed insane. Phew! Here's to all the johns. Checkout this website too... they did the soundtrack for it: www.ChoppingBlock.com Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!