Film Review - Soul Boys of the Western World (2014)

Soul Boys of the Western World is a documentary about the UK rock group Spandau Ballet and like the 2011 documentary Senna it consists entirely of acrhival footage with the band members narrating it as it details their rise and fall and later their reunion.

I thought this doco was GOLD (no pun intended) I really did and a lot of the reason for this is the use of the archive footage as like Senna it does a wonderful job of immersing the viewer in the period of the doco and there is a lot of time that goes through here as the years roll on and there are times where I just fell in love with what I was watching especially the footage of the 80s and the amazing fashions and hair and old TV shows and interview footage which also blends in the Britain of that time as well.

But the film does have a 20 minute slow point before that which I found to not be as interesting but once you get into the 80s setting of the doco the whole thing just opens up and becomes bright and colourful and the songs make you either want to tap your feet to them or start singing aloud (which I did when True and Gold came on.) and for a music doco to do both of those things is the sign of one that has hit its marks.

But what was also interesting to me was the climax and the look of the modern day footage felt like a nice juxtaposition to the archival footage and it for me marked a nice passage of time effect that made all of their success feel like a long time ago and I give director George Hendcken a lot of credit for his work here on the whole as he did a great job.

So all in all Soul Boys of the Western World was a great doco that I very highly recommend to music lovers as well as lovers of the 80s in general, 4 out of 5.