The New Edition Story

The New Edition Story is an exceptionally well-made, fast-paced, warts-and-all biopic.

The best reason to watch, however, is the music and the group’s on-stage performance. Whether or not you were a boy band fan in the 1980s, this is top-quality stuff.

Even as it stretches toward the six-hour mark, the film maintains a crisp forward momentum.

The New Edition Story tells the story with verve and charm, meticulously re-creating videos and photo shoots and, more notably, creating rootable characters out of already-familiar stars.

It proves to be a rare retrospective, one that’s both unvarnished and hazily nostalgic, and is as good an entry point as any for those interested in an(other) East Coast fling.

As good as the cast is, the music is even better, with many of the group’s most memorable hits, such as “Mr. Telephone Man,” “Candy Girl” and, most of all, “Can You Stand the Rain” are celebrated in exquisitely choreographed and costumed performances.

The energetic and musically talented cast elevates the project by several notches. ... It’s weirdly not detailed enough--Brown’s relationship with Houston is barely acknowledged, and, dammit, they don’t even show one second of the “Cool It Now” video being filmed--and too bloated for its own good, especially in its overly padded third act.