It's difficult to know how it's possible to go wrong making a film like this, especially considering there is no shortage of existing dot-to-dot templates (e.g. Spellbound) to work from, yet somehow director Rotaru manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. There is nothing egregiously terrible about the film per se, it's just that while watching it one can't help but get caught up in a stream of consciousness fantasy about how it ought to have been so much better. Strange artistic decisions abound - when Drew Mays is shown practicing at home we have to sit through several minutes of children dressed as fairies pirouetting in the foreground; capsule background biographies extend five to ten minutes longer than welcome; an absurd attempt is made to manufacture a heterosexual romance between an obviously closeted gay male performer and some random woman; but apparently no one makes any attempt to protect contestants from themselves and ensure they are dressed in a manner they won't be ashamed to watch on screen in years to come. Of course one could say that a documentarian's responsibility is simply to observe and present, but surely after 15 years of reality TV there's a pretty much universal understanding that story and character are components that are built and enhanced in the edit. There wasn't enough music, and what there was of it wasn't the right music. Weirdly we see two pianists performing Schumann's Toccata at different points in the film, but even more weirdly the exact same passage, not even representative of the piece as a whole, is used on both occasions. All the ingredients were there to make a fantastic, uplifting and energizing film about second chances, determination and the healing power of music, yet upon removal from the oven this soufflé fell flat as a pancake.
Review of They Came to Play
