Glitter & Doom

Glitter & Doom isn’t quite as polished as other jukebox musicals like “Mamma Mia!,” or even “Across the Universe” for that matter, but this scrappy, DIY approach is very much in keeping with the duo who inspired this film in the first place.

Films like these can hew toward positivity without scrubbing the script of risk, but Glitter & Doom risks next to nothing, except perhaps the Indigo Girls’ dignity.

Director Tom Gustafson (Were the World Mine) has crafted a sweet if plodding love story but it’s hard to truly hate on this whirling candy-colored poetic fairytale — it’s just too sincere, much like the musical source material.

Glitter & Doom feels like a beautiful, energetic half-measure.

Music can bypass your defenses. Music can imagine a better world, but it can also mourn the world or a love you've lost. Sometimes music does both at the same time. The Indigo Girls are like that. "Glitter & Doom" understands this dynamic, but the architecture of the film is so rickety there's nothing to hold onto. Just sit back and ride the waves of the music.

This is not a deep movie. A lot of it isn’t even good. The images and story are chaotically assembled. The arrangements bring the music too naggingly close to the rounded, boppy, angsty gleam of certain 21st-century stage musicals . . . Even so, the people who’ve made this thing understand what the Indigo Girls are all about.

Frenetic, repetitious and simplistic, it relies heavily on the stylized spectacle of the song numbers and lyrics to bolster the disappointing drama.