The Sparks Brothers

The Sparks Brothers

Take a musical odyssey through five weird and wonderful decades with brothers Ron & Russell Mael, celebrating the inspiring legacy of Sparks: your favorite band’s favorite band.

  • Released: 2021-06-18
  • Runtime: 140 minutes
  • Genre: Documentaries, Music
  • Stars: Ron Mael, Russell Mael, Beck, Gary Stewart, Mike Berns, Jane Wiedlin, Sal Maida, Christi Haydon, Dean Menta, Harley Feinstein, Tony Visconti, Mike Myers, Fred Armisen, Tammy Glover, John Hewlett, Giorgio Moroder, 'Weird Al' Yankovic, Muff Winwood, Nick Rhodes, John Taylor, Todd Rundgren, Flea, Hilly Michaels, Jason Schwartzman, Jonathan Ross, Amy Sherman-Palladino, Dan Palladino, Mark Crowther, Vera Hegarty, Neil Gaiman, Stephen Morris, Gillian Gilbert, Katie Puckrik, Patton Oswalt, Steve Jones, James Lowe, Bernard Butler, Scott Aukerman, David Kendrick, Stevie Nistor, Chris Difford, Martyn Ware, Alex Kapranos, Paul Morley, Julia Marcus, Pamela Des Barres, Roddy Bottum, Les Bohem, April Richardson, Lance Robertson, Jack Antonoff, John Congleton, Earle Mankey, Larry DuPont, Patricia Lowe, Vince Clarke, Andy Bell, Björk, Mark Gatiss, Richard Coble, Nick Heyward, Ian Hampton, Thurston Moore, Peter Knego, Michael Silverblatt, Adam Buxton, Tosh Berman, Edgar Wright, Rusty Egan, Jake Fogelnest, Dave Weigel, Madeline Bocchiaro, Sue Harris, Ben House, Evan Weiss, Alex Casnoff, Patrick Kelly, Eli Pearl, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Leos Carax, Adam Driver, Daniel Palladino
  • Director: Edgar Wright
 Comments
  • jamiecfc1 - 18 April 2022
    Fantastic guide to the Mael world.
    Probably one of the best stories in the musical world of a band still going strong(er?) just about 50 years since they began. For me it helps for sure that (a) I remember the first time in 1974, the Top of the pops "what the hell is that" moment, and the peaks and comebacks since then, and (b) that I saw them live for the first time last night. This is a fantastic insight into the private world of Ron and Russ, their achievements, the fans, the inspiration others take from them, and all in all is a fantastic work, lovingly created by a true fan. Even if you don't know the whole story, or think 2 hours plus is a long time to sit through a dvd/Blu-ray, watch it. As they say, there's something for everyone here.
  • Lejink - 17 January 2022
    Sparks Flying
    It always amazed me that unlike many other pairs of brothers in rock, like the Everlys, Davies and Gallaghers, the Mael brothers of Sparks never seemed to fall out or split up and have stayed together for well over fifty years, making music all the way through. In Edgar Wright's quirky, entertaining bio-documentary of the duo, while we're taken back to the brothers' origins, including their warm relationships with both their parents and how they were encouraged into music at an early age, even after the early death of their father, (who is the spit of adult Ron right down to his pencil moustache), we see them make their up and down way in the music business through to the present day.

    For some reason however, the brothers hold back on their own personal lives in adulthood so that we're told next to nothing of any relationships they've had in their lives or whether they either of them have any offspring. It seems that even the out-there Maels like to keep some things private, which of course is their right, but still it seemed like a strange omission.

    So, better then just to hunker down for their musical life and times which thankfully proved to be both eventful and entertaining. Vividly brought to life here by Wright. I really only know the band through their early U. K. success when they were briefly the hottest new glam-rock kids in town. They've been trying to recapture that success ever since through several albums and well over 300 recorded songs but without much more than passing success and yet they undoubtedly have a cult following which rises and falls it seems with every new release they make, Hopefully this award-winning, high-profile film will help them ride another wave of popularity, although it seems that the grounded Maels themselves are past caring, it being so late in the game now.

    Wright, who was only born during the year of their first U. K. chart success, uses the enigmatic participation of the siblings themselves, coupled with original animation, much video footage of the group down the years and as is the norm in enterprises like this, video pieces to camera by superfans of the group, an unsurprisingly disparate group who include musicians Beck, Flea of the Chilli Peppers, British TV presenter Jonathon Ross and Wright himself. Thus they trawl sequentially through their albums one by one with it seems a different celeb stepping up on cue to explain how much a particular album by the band means so much to them.

    Of more interest to me though was how Wright and his team managed to track down original band members and past collaborators going all the way back to their mid-60's beginnings. It's fair to say that no one really has a bad word to say against the two, even ex-band members and past record producers with whom they'd worked.

    Listen, I don't think that this movie is trying to say that Sparks are up there with the major movers and shakers of pop music such as critically approved and commercially popular evolutionary artists like Bowie or the Beatles but in the broad church of pop, they undoubtedly carved out their own little niche and made some cool records and memorable videos along the way.

    I may not quite have been encouraged enough by what I saw here to delve much more into their ocean-deep discography, although I'm wondering how I can resist album titles like "Whomp That Sucker", "Angst In My Pants" and my all-time favourite "Gratuitous Sax and Senseless Violins". Made with obvious love by director Wright, I thoroughly enjoyed investing two hours of my time to learn more about this fun, probably underrated band.

    The town, in the end, may not have proved big enough for the both of them, but I for one am sure glad they didn't leave.
  • jakob356 - 11 August 2021
    So good you think it's a mockumentary
    Sometimes fiction can be so good, that you wonder if it really happened, and you get the same strange feeling here.

    So it is just as good as "Exit Through the Gift Shop", "I'm Still Here" or "This is Spinal Tap".

    But as it rolls on, things just get more and more real, with SO much old footage, that you think that it would be a really hard job to fake all this. And it IS real, all of it.

    Mr Wright obviously loves Sparks, and the Mael brothers obviously just loves to write and perform songs. So there is much love in this movie. And it just makes you happy.

    I only have one Sparks LP in my collection. Which I before watching this had forgotten all abou. Have to do something about that.