The Sparks Brothers, a 2021 documentary from Edgar Wright, recently popped up on Netflix. I had added it to my list of films to watch despite having zero clue what any of it was about. I merely wanted to watch it because Edgar Wright was associated with it. Never mind that I have yet to see Baby Driver, a film I should make some time for. My mood lately, perhaps due to Get Back, is one of rock documentaries, so I loaded The Sparks Brothers up and sat back ready to learn. What an odd experience.
First of all, I thought the documentary was very well done. It was two and a half hours, but flew by.
I liked the archival footage. I liked the interviews. I liked the look. I liked it all!
Then it ended and I found myself with the burning question–was it a joke?

Have you ever been so on the outside of some part of pop culture that you have no idea what is going on? I’m raising my hand. I’m still not convinced that Sparks is a real band. Before the film, I had never once heard of Sparks, but figured, I might recognize one of their songs. After the film, I realized that I had never heard a Sparks song in my life. I’ve never seen this band. Never interacted with them. There has been no crossover between them and an artist I care about. I feel on the outside looking in. I am missing out on some serious cred apparently. When Patton Oswald is on the screen saying that Sparks is maybe the greatest band of all time and, to me, their music sounds exactly like overblown garbage pop, I feel like my ears don’t work!

There in lies where I was confused if this was supposed to be a joke or not. Taking for granted that I literally knew jack shit about the band, imagine as I’m watching. It felt like the Dewey Cox of musical documentaries. A misunderstood American pop group gets shipped to Europe, refused to be played initially because of their nationalities, but eventually blow up all over Europe. They have one improbable “hit” after “hit” and never stray from their own identities. Oh, and one of the members looks like Hitler. I’m not making this up and you might be reading this, intimately familiar, and scoff at how silly or musically ill-educated I sound. Doesn’t matter. Not only does the story follow the tropes, one would expect of a faux-documentary, it has the right talking heads saying the right things, playing it so straight that I just couldn’t tell.

Each time the film transitions to talk about a landmark record or album, we get the title in big block letters. Except, when none are familiar, it all feels like a joke. None more so than when they talk about the song, When I’m With You. First, you get celebrities and knowers praising the lyrics of the song, sure okay, and then the film explains that it was a big hit for people on French beaches. I laughed.

I don’t know exactly where I’m going with this. The film is great. The review portion of this write up ended in the first paragraph, watch it. But, it was the surreal feeling that hasn’t left yet. That there are swaths of life and culture that I have zero grasp on and vice versa. That doesn’t seem to bother other people. It doesn’t bother my wife that she won’t know the feuds of the 2000s New Jersey emo scene like me and I suppose when that documentary gets made one day, there will be someone sitting there, laughing, when a talking head says Cute Without the E (Cut from the Team) was a pivotal song for a whole movement. It was huge in the Minnesota winter. So why does it bother me?