One Direction: This Is Us - Review

One Direction: This is Us - Film Poster

Review of One Direction: This Is Us

The screen fades in from black to a collage of baby photos, every tween girl in the theater screams in high anticipation of, maybe, just maybe, seeing someone from One Direction pop up in a film titled One Direction: This Is Us, and I gear up for what I’m sure will be one of the worst movie theater experience of my life. Funny enough, it was far from it! Each boy got a couple of squeals from the audience as they were introduced, but after that, Harry Styles would speak, and these kids were listening.

I wasn’t necessarily planning on taking in This Is Us, but I was invited. Hey, do I love One Direction now? One thing was made clear by this film; each member of 1D brings something to this boy band. There aren’t any real throwaway talents or personalities, and we all know that feeling well enough of looking at a five-piece pop group and thinking, “They can ditch ‘guy with ponytail,’ ‘guy who’s probably too old,' or Chris Kirkpatrick.”

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Well-directed by Morgan Spurlock, This Is Us is handled cleverly, in that it doesn’t overly glamorize the experience of going from zero to hero over the course of a season of reality television and finding immense fame and fortune in the months following. Instead, we follow each One Direction boy and their families through the waning mix of emotions that accompany stardom. For example, when we follow Louis back to his hometown, we visit Toys R Us (the only place of employment he hadn’t been sacked from), and playfully search for One Direction gear on the shelves. It's a genuine and quite surreal moment. When we catch up with Liam’s parents, though, we realize that the coolness of having your face on a lunchbox next to Spiderman's comes at the price of being all but entirely absent from the lives of your loved ones. In Louis’ defense, it’s also mentioned that his trip back home was only his fifth since auditioning for X Factor! Only five, five, visits home!

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I have to say, I think I was most impressed with Zayn, and I did not expect to leave feeling that way. I guess I should know better than to trust the likes of internet blogging scum drumming up bull behind the safe anonymity of their computer screens, but I’d just assumed he’d be checked-out and over it already. Instead, he turned out to be a quiet young man with a taste for fine arts and Batman, as well as a guy who loves his best buddies, the other four members of 1D. From buying his family a new home to showing off his very own graffiti room, Zayn seemed both grounded and dedicated. Side Note: There was one scene in This Is Us where Harry and Liam reminisce a bit while fishing, and they kid about, at one point, having a “serious” conversation about kicking Zayn out of the band for missing a coffee date. One girl muttered something along the lines of, “Do it...” only to find herself pelted by obscenities from her fellow theatergoing Directioners. Hell, I kind of wanted to tell her off too! What’s happening to me?

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Niall, Harry, and Louis keep us entertained with their own particular brands of comedy throughout the film. Harry is clever and always has a line. Louis is the self-proclaimed clown, and his classic gag of silly-singing specific words or phrases doesn’t ever grow old. Niall, on the other hand, is just fun to study. It’s clear that the other boys get a real kick out of Niall. The film begins with Louis slap-attacking him.

What’d you do that for?!

And funny enough, I totally get why now. I mean that as a complete and utter compliment to Niall!

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One thing I was seriously happy about was how Spurlock chose to feature the performance footage. As someone who wasn’t too familiar with the band’s catalogue of tunes, it was much more pleasurable to get a wide sampling of half-songs as opposed to having to sit through a handful of full-length performances. Guess what? They’re actually good! They’re talented guys who take pride in their abilities, but loathe dancing. Which, of course, means that they groove like hooligans in-sync to their music. Louis and Niall seem to have the widest array goofy maneuvers and secret handshakes in the form of choreography.

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Liam, Harry, Niall, Zayn, and Louis live in a world of bizarre extremes, clearly. They work like lunatics and play even crazier, from stealing golf carts to camping like normal buds. If they’re not being booed at the VMAs (Not featured in This Is Us, of course) for being talented, attractive, and extremely popular, they’re hounded while out and about to the point that a mere sneaker shopping trip turns into the closest thing I’ve ever witnessed to zombie apocalypse. One Directioner even tried to, literally, steal Liam’s ear, but, alas, he needs it. Liam, if I had to pinpoint one member, seems to be the heart of the group. All of the boys love and adore their fans though, noting on several occasions that their insanely busy schedule, oddly enough, keeps them from getting to know the people they work so hard for as much as they’d like to.The only seemingly disingenuous moment came not from the boys but from Simon Cowell, who popped up for about three seconds of screen time to clue us in on the fact that he threw One Direction together in a matter of ten minutes on a hunch after cutting all five members in one clean sweep. We get it, Simon, you made 1D, but there's no way that's how things went down on such a carefully manipulated reality show.

In the end, I would recommend seeing One Direction: This Is Us, whether you’re a diehard fan or just someone who’s curious about a fair peek behind the curtain of the world of international entertainment superstardom. It's good clean fun with just enough raw grit. It's the equivalent of taking a squeaky clean british boy bander and plastering his body with wild tattoos. It's a refreshing documentary about the worldwide adventures of five talented guys as they live out their dreams in music, all the while recognizing that when their journey of fame and fortune comes to a close, the friendships built will last a lifetime.

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Review of One Direction: This Is Us