The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile

Throughout, Horan tactfully pulls from archival interviews and footage of the singer to mark her meteoric rise as a teenager in the 1970s; her tumultuous, tabloid-fodder, 1980s career; and her effective blackballing from the industry when she became too rock & roll and irreverent for country sensibilities.

It is a fascinating document of making a comeback record — sorry, Tanya — while balancing the hard work and the gentle coaxing and cheerleading required when working with a complex talent like Tucker.

This profoundly moving movie covers a different kind of success, as a great musician takes pains to make sure her idol receives some proper respect — the only currency that always matters.

The somewhat awkwardly titled documentary, The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile, turns out to be an accurate summary of a film that celebrates two women.

Even if you do know how this story ends, it’s beautifully touching seeing and hearing somebody who’s been through the fame, celebrity and cocaine wringer, just grateful at the victory lap her biggest fan provides for her.

The movie interweaves the contemporary sessions with a very selective — and, while not wholly sanitized, certainly discreet — account of her tumultuous past. Overall it’s a better-than-competent piece of fan service and a not unpersuasive bid for an auxiliary youth audience.

The creative vision necessary to properly chronicle the impact of two musical icons never presents itself and thoroughly undermines the film’s resonance, deforming the movie into a prosaic, excessively sentimental catalog of events.