I hated Bros. The first line in the archival footage here is “Are you ready to rock?” and right away I’m taken back to my 10 year old self screaming THIS ISN’T ROCK. THIS IS CRAP!! The thing is though Bros taught me something as a kid, you can’t learn what you love without having a feel for something you hate and for me, even as a kid, Bros were everything that was wrong with Pop music. Of course I knew sod all about the Goss twins, so once more I’m learning. I’m learning that Luke is quite a nice bloke, a bit delusional but nice (with a laughable collection of Top Shop bought vintage rock shirt’s). Matt however is a complete idiot epitomising all those people in this world who believe they know everything and generally would do much better to just shut the fuck up. To be fair this is partly because he appears to surround himself with people who echo that belief for him. The backbone of this is following the brothers in the build up to their what was to be largely nonexistent comeback and it tells a pretty decent story. Possibly because it’s quite tragic and probably because that vindicates my 10 year olds feeling towards this ‘band’. As a documentary it doesn’t do anything new. I imagine it came about much in the way every reality TV show does, where a bunch of people are clearly put together simply because they have personalities that are going to clash. I’m guessing the producers came across Luke and thought ‘hmm this could work’, then met Matt and realised the formula was there prepackaged. The edit plays up to this, making the most of the fights, playing them out in full. It’s like watching two men still squabbling like children. None of this is about the music and all about the image, mostly indulgent and cringe inducing, so in many ways nothing has changed in the last 30 years... aside the third one (Craig... had to Google it) who isn’t here. Clearly he’s grown up and had no interest in being part of the farce again, unlike some fans now in their 40s still treating them like superstars, fawning over them and feeding the delusion. Which perhaps is the message here... it’s all fake... so it doesn’t matter about getting your picture in the paper.
6/10
