The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart

The doc’s examination of the band’s creative process contains some of its most riveting moments.

An exemplary lesson in how to make a revealing rockumentary, “The Bee Gees” (premiering Saturday) will satisfy lifelong skeptics and loyal fans. It’s less of the usual tract (we had them all wrong!) and more of a reckoning with the profound degree of artistry and accomplishment that should be the last word on any Bee Gees story. The movie is also a unique consideration of the phenomenon of rise and fall, and how one learns to live with it.

In its middlebrow celebratory way, How Can You Mend a Broken Heart reveals the Bee Gees’ saga to be one of the most fascinating and, at times, awe-inspiring in the history of pop.

As the band explains in this excellent documentary from Frank Marshall (whose odd career has taken in Arachnophobia, Congo and Alive), it took them five months to go from obscurity in Australia to careering about swinging London with The Beatles.

This is a rock documentary that doesn’t just recount a band’s rise, breakup, and successful reunion, though it does do that. It invites its audience to see the band’s success from a deeper, more contextualized point of view.

Grooving through the decades, this entertaining documentary aspires to prove that the Bee Gees were more than a hitmaker for disco nightclubs. Rather, Barry, Maurice and Robin were master songwriters and chameleons, continually reinventing themselves to harmonize with the times.

An interesting, grown-up musical profile.

"The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart," the music documentary directed by Frank Marshall about Iconic band The Bee Gees, shines when sharing so much of the brilliant and successful music of The Brothers Gibb, much of the film narrated by the sole survivor of the band, lead singer and songwriter Barry Gibb, proving that their music is truly timeless. But, I found the film faltered by not diving deeper into the struggles of the band, including only a brief spot focusing on their early breakup, no mention of Bee Gees starring in the 1978 Robert Stigwood produced, failed musical film, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," and short on the brothers various struggles over the years with addictions, leading to the losses of brothers Andy (1988), Maurice (2003) and Robin (2012), briefly focused in the film. I didn't really feel like I learned anything new about The Brothers Gibb from the documentary that I didn't already know. Still, the documentary thrives by including all the iconic, great music and I especially enjoyed what director Frank Marshall shared on The Bee Gees early Miami years, Criteria Recording Studios and the Gibb Brothers tremendous contribution to the Miami Sound and the Disco Era.

It falls short? Yes, but not for lack of intent but because it would be impossible to encapsulate in less than two hours a 50-year old career, but for a fan like me, it was quite enjoyable. It may not be an epic documentary, but I enjoyed it, and ultimately, that's what counts.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]