Now, I’m sure that if you are a parent of a girl that is anywhere from 6 to 19 then you got the desperate request for this blu-ray for Christmas. It is a matter of life or death. If you do not buy them the story of Harry, Niall, Zayn, Liam and Louis – better known as One Direction – then they would perish of a broken heart. Admittedly I am not a fan of these five guys from the UK who are a product of the UK X Factor and Simon Cowell but I do have to give them their proper due. They are huge. Young girls go Lady Gaga for them. Another admission is that I don’t know the first thing about them really so I undertook this review as part work and part fact finding mission.
The first thing I found out had absolutely nothing to do with the boys. It was the fact that Morgan Spurlock of Supersize Me fame directed this little ditty. Interesting choice for a director. Led me to think that maybe this was not simply going to be a fluff piece, that maybe I would get some meat to chew on. Unfortunately that is not the case. The film paints them as nice, likable and generally in an exclusively positive light.
One Direction as of a couple of years ago has been everywhere. They are a global phenomenon that you cannot really escape from. The boy band was put together after appearing individually on the UK version of The X Factor. None of them came in first place but they did win over a ton of fans. Simon Cowell saw the potential and put them together and, as they say, everything else is history.
This Is Us follows them around to different venues on their world tour after they had become music sensations. It starts at the beginning – before they were famous, as solo performers, then competing again on The X Factor as a group, and finally social media’s part in them becoming so popular.
Spurlock has used a fairly typical concert/band documentary format for This Is Us. No originality points for the director here. We get concert footage from different angles, some backstage stuff and then some footage from the boys when they were younger. Fans will enjoy all the access they think they are getting but in actuality it is all very controlled and contrived. It is not a film meant to win over new fans, rather it has just been made to satisfy the rabid appetites for One Direction stuff by their tens of millions of female fans.
Special Features: Going Home, Extended Scenes, The 1D Family, Before the Show, I Didn’t Do It!, Hold That Pose, Best Song Ever Music Video, Up All Night!, Ultraviolet Digital Copy
