Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is playing in theaters at the time of writing. Rated PG-13. Common Sense says 11.
STORY: C+
Although the film is strictly a concert recording, it does contain a degree of narrative structure.
Some folks could listen to Taylor Swift sing her songs all day long. For others, two hours and forty minutes may begin to feel like a long time (can you imagine?).
Swift delights everyone by smartly breaking her show into short segments- each one an “era” that covers a single album. Each one feels like a quick, elaborate, bop-filled short story. Each one satisfies the part of our brain that searches for a story whenever we sit down and/or dance around in a movie theater.
PEOPLE: A-
Swift needs to carry the movie (obviously) and does so all too well.
Again, most people paying money to see this movie will have little issue listening to Swift for nearly three hours. Yet her onstage presence is more than capable of keeping even the most hesitant Swifties hypnotized.
I’ve been to hundreds of concerts. I’ve seen dozens of ridiculously talented performers at the height of their powers leave audiences giddy and delirious. Two of them stand miles above the rest. A mystical, spiritual power flowed through their bodies. They were pied pipers, capable of hypnotizing an entire crowd with no apparent effort. They were Prince, who delighted in this power, and Kurt Cobain, who never seemed to want anything to do with it.
I can’t definitively place Taylor Swift in that category without seeing her perform in person. But watching her do what she does in this film definitely puts her into the conversation.
FILM NERD STUFF: C
The long runtime results in the film’s cinematic aspects feeling rather repetitive.
There’s only so many cool angles, flamboyant pans, and dazzling zooms one can use to show Swift wowing a crowd. The camerawork is top notch, but its charms fade as the film goes on.
We occasionally catch a pairing of quick cuts that don’t match up, making it obvious that the film is using footage from two different nights’ performances. These glitches break our spell. We know we’re watching something manufactured, not organic. We just don’t want to be reminded of it.
YOU HAD TO BE THERE (Elective Class): A+
This is why god invented movie theaters.
Nostalgic cinephiles use the words “communal experience” fairly often these days. These are people who pine for the old days when folks watched movies together. Even when we do manage to step away from the stream, many modern theaters make us feel like we’re alone in our homes. We relax, fully reclined and out of view from the rows above and below us.
This was not that. And it was awesome.
Sparkly dressed tweens twirled about, jumping up and down in the aisles. Groups of friends - recent college grads, likely - would whisper, “Oh my God!!!,” each time one of their favorite songs appeared. Glow in the dark inflatables bounced with glee between every row. And get this - a fire alarm went off halfway through (it was nothing and we were all back in our seats in about 15 minutes), but even that could do nothing to extinguish the Taylor fever that had spread throughout the theater.
Rocking out with Taylor Swift isn’t what wistful movie buffs picture when they moan about the death of cinema, but it’s harder to imagine a clearer or more vivid example of the feeling they’re longing for.
FINAL COMMENTS:
Taylor Swift opens up her world tour to the thousands who couldn’t find or afford a ticket. She also opens up her wallet to millions and millions of our dollars. I’d bet that nearly everyone who attended considers it a win-win.