Is Morgan Spurlock selling out?
What's the rabble-rouser who made a nation focus on the destructive impact of a fast-food diet in "Super Size Me" doing directing what some might call cinematic fast food, a 3-D documentary about the boy band One Direction?
"As a documentary filmmaker, the chance to make a film of this scope and this scale about one of the biggest bands in the world — it was impossible to say no," Spurlock said before the film opened nationwide last weekend.
"The day this movie opens, it's going to be shown on more screens worldwide and be seen by more people than all of my other films combined on opening day. Why would you not want to make a movie like that?"
In fact, you could definitely say he gives the audience what it wants.
At a screening of "One Direction — This Is Us," teenage girls screamed and swooned whenever one of the lads was shirtless — a common occurrence. It is an upbeat, dare we say infectious film that mixes concert-performance footage filmed with eight cameras with behind-the-scenes profiles of the five teens from England — Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson — who were discovered by Simon Cowell on his British TV show "The X Factor" (the model for Cowell's "American Idol").
Spurlock channels his inner Richard Lester ("A Hard Day's Night") and Martin Scorsese ("The Last Waltz," "Shine a Light") as a top director who exercises a few unused muscles by making a concert film (Scorsese, in fact, makes an appearance in "This Is Us"; he brings his daughter backstage after a Madison Square Garden concert). Spurlock, who said he passed on chances to do films about Justin Bieber and Katy Perry, said he would have passed on this project as well had the boys been jerks.
"They're not — that's the great thing," Spurlock said. "They're incredibly charming, grounded — they come from good families. The humblest of humbling beginnings."
