Critic Reviews

Even if the music leaves you cold, there’s plenty of captivating awkwardness here, like Paul McCartney listlessly watching the monitors in his dressing room, or producer Harvey Weinstein solving a tech issue by calling Google exec Eric Schmidt in the audience.

Touching and unexpectedly funny moments (such as McCartney busting out the theme song from “The Monkees”) mingle with highlights from the show for an unusually compelling keepsake from what might well be the last time many of these ’60s rockers perform together.

Laced with familiar tunes and faces, 12-12-12 isn't revelatory, but it is a fun watch, paced well with a great soundtrack.

What Amir Bar-Lev and Charlie Lightening’s documentary provides that hasn’t been previously available is an amusing portrait of the backstage goings-on.

An impressive yet drama-less concoction that can’t totally disguise its slightly stale aftertaste.

Occasionally entertaining but rarely memorable, 12-12-12 never goes beyond the level of a really good bonus feature on a special-edition concert CD.

12-12-12 is not really a concert movie so much as it is a densely compacted scrapbook of moments onstage and off.

Despite some pleasant backstage-footage filler, however, 12-12-12 ultimately so truncates its artists' performances (each is given one song, and those are heavily edited) that the effect is like watching the original TV broadcast in fast-forward.

Busy, but not exactly invigorating.