This Time

Documentary director Victor Magnatti is more comfortable with loud and proud, and perhaps a tad suspicious of insinuation and circumspection.

Not only does the film lack focus in its chosen spectrum of likeable performers, it also feels short of any kind of structure or arc, leaving its subjects to toil along in place for an overlong runtime with no end in sight.

Unfocused, and feeling mostly incomplete in even the most basic standards of documentary film, This Time unfortunately reflects an amateur approach that is felt not just in the filmmaking but in the very people trying to bring The Sweet Inspirations, Pat Hodges and Bobby Belfry to bigger recognition.

Tantalizing snippets from their combative history and rotating membership are tossed to the sidelines; the members' personality clashes and mutual psychoanalyzing hint at a much better story left untold.

This earnest, at times touching, reach-for-your-dreams doc about musical hopefuls in middle age gets sidetracked quickly. When it should focus on a reunited R&B group, it wallows in the self-aggrandizement of an L.A. producer and, most awkwardly, a New York cabaret singer.

The Sweet Inspirations ranked as one of the most important backup singing groups in record-industry history, having performed with Aretha Franklin, Van Morrison, Dionne Warwick, Jimi Hendrix, Nina Simone, the Drifters, Wilson Pickett, Dusty Springfield and Elvis Presley. Yet, aside from an occasional still photograph, not a single frame of archival footage from their illustrious careers shows up in This Time.