Critic Reviews

It’s an engaging blitz of nostalgia guaranteed to leave core viewers misty-eyed.

Lionel Richie serves as the de facto tour guide for this trip down memory lane, which fulfills its promise to make a better day (or at least 90-some-odd minutes) for you and me.

The good news is that it largely breaks the trend of mediocre rock docs through specificity, being at its best when it’s granular in the process of the recording, including some lyrical near-misses, some personality conflicts in the room, and even one participant who liked a bit too much wine.

Directed by Bao Nguyen, who expertly combines the multi-camera recordings from the night of the session with new interviews with Richie, Cyndi Lauper, Kenny Loggins, Huey Lewis, Smokey Robinson and Bruce Springsteen, as well as technicians who were there, “The Greatest Night in Pop” is a terrific behind-the-scenes chronicle of the making of a single that sold 20 million copies worldwide, won multiple Grammys and, most important, of course, raised more than $60 million in 1985 dollars.

The footage-forward approach does make the whole thing tremendously fun to watch.

As far as celebratory backward glances go, it’s compelling enough to temporarily brighten one’s day.

While the making of the song was partially detailed in its long-form video, there’s plenty of new, engaging, and sometimes eyebrow-raising anecdotal material here.

The anecdotes are mostly on brand for the musicians.

The Greatest Night in Pop is a worthy story in its own right, but a bit more of the director's touch could've done justice to this gigantic achievement of pop music history.

While The Greatest Night in Pop may not amount to anything more than a sanitized and somewhat masturbatory look back at one of the wildest get-togethers in the modern history of music (the film doesn’t offer any commentary deeper than “isn’t it so fucking crazy that this happened, and that we have it all on tape?”), there’s no denying that it’s a lot of fun to watch it all go down.