Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

Very few directors are so intrinsically linked to music as much as Cameron Crowe.  From writing at Rolling Stone magazine as a young teenager, to screenwriting Fast Times at Ridgemont High, to the John Cusack boombox scene in Say Anything, to his somewhat autobiographical Almost Famous, music has been as important to him and his stories as anything else.

Therefore, perhaps there isn't a better person to write a love letter to a band like Pearl Jam than Crowe himself.  Friends with the band since their earliest days, Crowe takes a look at the band's first twenty years of history in Pearl Jam Twenty.

Comprised of new interviews with band members and contemporaries (i.e. Chris Cornell from Soundgarden) interspersed with archival footage that numbered more than 1,200 hours, Pearl Jam Twenty is not a no holds barred, deep look into everything that Pearl Jam has gone through.  If you're looking for something akin to the excellent Foo Fighters documentary Back and Forth (released earlier this year), you'll be disappointed. 

For what it is, Pearl Jam Twenty is a perfectly acceptable way of spending two hours, especially if you are already a fan.  There is a lot of great previously unreleased footage here, including the holy grail footage of singer Eddie Vedder slow dancing with Kurt Cobain at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards.  There's also footage of a legendary show amongst die hard fans of a gig in Zurich from 1992 that was essentially the band's dress rehearsal for their MTV Unplugged a month later.

It's amazing to me that so much footage of Mother Love Bone exists, the band that predated Pearl Jam and ultimately ended with the death of its singer, Andy Wood.  The story starts there, continues on with bassist Jeff Ament and guitarist Stone Gossard recording demos, being put in touch with Vedder, and diving full on into starting Pearl Jam.

The band offers some terrific insight into their rapid ascension into the biggest band on earth for a short period, and the never before seen photos of what happened with Vedder's stalker crashing into a wall in front of his house is particularly eerie.  There is not a lot of conflict that's talked about, and the band's rotating series of drummers is given a 90 second vaudeville treatment that makes no real mention or detail into why most of the guys left.

It's not entirely surprising, however, that negativity and "he said/she said" is not a large part of this film.  Anyone who has seen Crowe's prior work should know what to expect (or maybe more importantly, what NOT to expect).  He truly loves this band, and wants to show not only why he loves this band,  but why people like me love this band.  And he's successful.

Gossard gives by far the most interesting interview quips, and Ament and guitarist Mike McCready also share a lot of detail.  There's not a lot here with Vedder, and some of what is here is actually outtake footage from prior releases like Single Video Theory, or a long MTV Europe interview with him days after Cobain's body was found in 1994.  The fact you even get to see the infamous fire pole in his house is about as deep you get with him.

The live performance footage can be a bit hit or miss (a large amount of the live footage is stuff filmed for the band's 2007 Immagine in Cornice DVD that was left off that release), but the 1995 Asian tour footage is great to see.  And the band's first ever performance of the Mother Love Bone song Crown of Thorns is certainly one of the high points of the film.

The film delves into the Roskilde tragedy, and the turning point it represented.  They talk about how they went from being able to say "no" to being able to do what they want to do when they want to do it, and being perfectly ok with it if it's not hugely successful.  More than anything though, it shows how this band made it through all of this stuff together, how they have come to appreciate their success (Gossard saying some things maybe taking 10 years for him to really understand how good it was for the band was one of the best quotes of the movie) and each other. 

Many people have never understood my obsession with this band.  This movie is as much for them as it is for someone like me.  Maybe you'll never like this band or their music, but if nothing else, watching this film will no doubt help you understand why they've stayed so popular for 20 years now, and why fans like me stay so devoted for so long.

Pearl Jam Twenty will be released on DVD this week, after a short run in theatres and on demand over the last month.  A fan club exclusive blu-ray and special edition DVD has already sold out at the band's website.  The regular DVD will contain approximately 30 minutes of bonus footage.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older