THE SHOW: California Love

As "THE SHOW: California Love" (2022 release; 84 min.) opens, we are "20 Days Before the Show", and Musical Director Adam Blackstone and Executive Producer Jesse Collins, both veterans in putting on Super Bowl Halftime Shows and other high profile events, address the challenges and joys of this year's Halftime Show. At this point we are less than 10 minutes in the the documentary.

Couple of comments: this is the latest documentary from Eric Palmer ("L. A. Burning: The Riots 25 Years Later"). It's now become an annual tradition that someone is doing a documentary about putting on the Super Bowl Halftime Show. Given that the last Super Bowl took place in Los Angeles, it wasn't a difficult decision to focus on (mostly) West Coast hip hop music and artists. For a documentary to be compelling viewing, it typically needs some sort of underlying tension or mystery. That is pretty much lacking entirely in this one. The biggest challenge is how to accommodate 5 super stars (Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Mary J. Blige and Eminem) in a meaningful way in exactly 13 minutes of music and spectacle. I must admit that my personal preference is to feature one artist and let him or her play the entire Halftime Show. But all that aside, there really isn't much to discover in this documentary that you didn't know already.

"THE SHOW: California Love" recently premiered on Showtime and is now streaming on the SHO app, where I caught it. If you have an interest in hip hop or in Super Bowl Halftime Shows in general, I'd readily suggest you check this out (with expectations kept low), and draw your own conclusion.