This lively, fun music doc aims to give Ron and Russell Mael, the two siblings at the heart of the shape-shifting American pop outfit Sparks, their due in the sixth decade of their career as eccentric, authentic musical artists. The Sparks Brothers makes a giddy claim for the band, which has so far straddled glam rock, teen pop, electro, new wave and more, as outsider pop musicians of the highest order. It’s both a joyous fanboy love letter and a warm-hearted collaboration, as the Maels are clearly closely involved in pulling it all together.
It’s also the first time British director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver) has made a doc. Wright is endearingly open about his love for the band – even putting himself in the frame as one of a long, slightly random list of many, many talking heads, who include Beck, Flea, Duran Duran, Tony Visconti, Jonathan Ross and Mike Myers.
The brothers themselves appear throughout, in a cascade of archive footage, but also in new interviews and quirky sketch moments, at recent gigs and in their studios and homes in Los Angeles, where they still live.
Wright’s sheer enthusiasm means that a running length of almost two-and-a-half hours doesn’t feel excessive at all: he powers chronologically through a pop survival story that has you wanting to punch the air when you see the brothers still working and creating in their hometown of Los Angeles right into the recent pandemic (with hopeful nods to an upcoming film collaboration with out-there French filmmaker Leos Carax, surely a kindred spirit). It’s a great underdog tale, told with infectious, childlike glee.
