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This was surprisingly enlightening. It mostly followed Berry and Smokey, and Berry, who has done some ugly things in his day, seemingly has aged into a genial dude. Smokey was always genial, and the persistence of his green eyes well into his senior years is shocking. Maybe he colors them with lenses. Clearly they're both on their second or third set of beautiful teeth.
Some big stars (notably Diana Ross) sat this one out, but they got some real great memories from Mary Wilson, Valerie Simpson, Martha Reeves, Otis Williams, Duke Faqir, and others. Stevie's there too, and even Neil Young — who was briefly on Motown in between The Squires and Buffalo Springfield when he played with Rick James in a Canadian R&B outfit called The Myna Birds. Holland, Dozier, and Holland, who I always thought of as professorial, were actually seemingly regular guys who just flourished under the in-house competitiveness that Gordy intentionally fostered. The film-makers put it together with a cool stylish animation thing of recalling old scenes by using live audio and placing photos of the speakers around the room as their voices played back, making you feel like a fly on the wall of some of these legendary sessions.
They skip over some of the darker chapters — only hinting at the power plays by Gordy and Diana Ross that created decades of bad blood. They skip the Jacksons' defection and the tragedy of Tammy Tyrell entirely, but do a pretty good job covering Stevie and Marvin Gaye's personal transformations in the seventies — how it worried Gordy to give them that much creative control, and while it deeply affected the Motown brand, it also gave the world some of the best soul ever. Berry also deserves some extra blame setting the brand adrift by moving the whole operation to LA and breaking off from the roots and the family vibe that made everybody show up to work early and row in the same direction. He was looking to diversify, but I'm still waiting for the guy to produce a good film. Even this doc was made by a British production company.
But for a bit there, it really gives you faith that, if the circumstances are right and the vision is strong, a mom-and-pop shop can still conquer the world.
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