It is always dangerous to go into a documentary about a subject you love with expectations. I love the Kinks so it may have been inevitable that "Do It Again," the new documentary about music journalist Geoff Edgers' attempt to reunite the combustable group, is one of the more disappointing films in recent memory. Billed here in passing as "the Kinks movie," it has, in fact, precious little to do with the Kinks. A film about an attempt to reunite the feuding Davies brothers would be interesting unfortunately the focus is on Edgers' effort born from the crisis of turning 40 and cutbacks at his job with the Boston Globe. Along the way Edgars does land interviews with artists including Sting, Peter Weller of the Jam, Robyn Hitchcock and Zooey Deschanel (who once again became my favorite Deschanel sister by singing "David Watts" from memory) but they have very little to do with his quest. Unfortunately Edgers lacks the charisma necessary to carry a film where the objects of his affection may not appear. His adolescent fanboy longing to play a song with the reunited band quickly becomes tiresome. Plus his bitching that Kinks frontman Ray Davies is elusive and refuses to be interviewed is all the more off-putting. Ray created a narrator who interviews an older version of himself for his autobiographer. Does this sound like a man interested in airing his personal life in public? Any fan knows that Ray does not seek publicity. The film falls into a contemporary trap familiar from the overzealous documentarians who become personalities in their own films and that is where the film fails.
 |
| Zooey sings "David Watts" while Edgers plays guitar badly. |
