Watch Janis: Little Girl Blue For Free

Truly Dreadful Film

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I remember listening to Janis while she was alive, and I was not a fan during her life. Now that she has been gone for so many years, I still can't stand her. Nothing against her, I feel the same way about Morrison and the 'Doors.' Neither of these did anything for me and I certainly did not miss them. The movie/documentary is a bit pandering and over-the- top is OK...but not honest. One can not stop people on a path to self-distraction. I am so saddened and somewhat offended when troubled souls are elevated to some iconic status, marched through media tabloids as 'great' people. These folks are suffering and some had honesty might succeed in saving them. Nah...the documentary seems to miss the mark.

Amy Berg's documentary charting the course that blues and rock singer Janis Joplin took from her childhood hometown of Port Arthur, Texas to San Francisco and then Los Angeles in the 1960s is filled with great clips and fantastic music (particularly the performance of the lesser-known "Little Girl Blue" shown at the conclusion). However, there's nothing here--not even the reading of letters Janis wrote home to her family--that will surprise anyone who has followed Joplin's career since her untimely demise in October 1970. Although she lived a wild, scattered but full-blooded life in her 27 years, Joplin's recording career was extremely brief (two albums, one with her first band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, followed by a solo album, released posthumously). Janis as a human being was anything but predictable, and yet the myriad of documentaries chronicling her life and stardom all seem to cover the same territory, the sex-drugs-and-rock and roll high-life. Berg insulates Joplin here, as Joplin was insulated by the yes-men in her life who were trying to steer her career. We do not hear about the books Janis read (she was a huge F. Scott Fitzgerald fan), the movies she saw, how she felt about the war in Vietnam or the hippie movement or her second-rate (for her) performance at Woodstock. She is, of course, a tragic figure in popular music, but fleshing out that figure--giving us some surprising, intimate insights into her quirky personality--has yet to be achieved. **1/2 from ****

I will say up front that I am a fan of Janis Joplin and looked forward to seeing this (on the BBC) it details her life in chronological order from her days growing up in Port Arthur, Texas to her many incarnations with all of her bands including 'Big Brother and the Holding Company'.There are interviews with friends, lovers and family. There is plenty of archive footage but only snippets of songs which includes the Monterey Pop appearance. Many songs are featured but the real reason here is to tell her story and her battles with drugs and alcohol and her of love of the blues, which she could sing so beautifully that even watching this I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rising.It is amazing how she managed to put so much emotion and passion into her music and it seems the people around it saw that in her too. Her firmament burnt for too short a time but while it did so it was also one of the brightest and most loved. I truly think this is a great tribute to Janis Joplin – not just the star but the person – highly recommended.

As an avid Janis Joplin Fan I really wanted to see this Documentary.However with only 1 theater showing it within a 30 mile radius of my home how do they expect this film to do well? Moreover there is only 7 showings a day. I do not live in a remote part of the United States. So why is it there is only 1 theater in New York showing it? Seems the producers of the film have doomed it to failure before it was ever released. I hope it gets released on Blu Ray as it appears that is the only way I will get to see it. Disappointed Fan!