Davis, Tamra

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    ‘Larger Than Life: Reign of the Boybands’ Review: The Wrong Stuff

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    The boy band stories in Tamra Davis’s documentary rarely intersect in a way that builds a meaningful or compelling perspective.From a documentary filmmaking perspective, there’s very little to go wild about in “Larger Than Life: Reign of the Boybands.” This frenetic mix of nostalgic fan service and rehashed pop culture history begins at a breakneck pace as if it’s a film made for TikTok. Naturally, it overflows with a cacophony of screaming and fainting fans.Directed by Tamra Davis (“Crossroads,” “Billy Madison”), the movie often feels more like a greatest hits compilation than a cohesive narrative. Its goal is ambitious: to trace the evolution of boy bands — from the Beatles to the K-pop group Seventeen — and explore how the groups have shaped global culture over the past 50 years. Disappointingly, the documentary prioritizes historical play-by-plays over deeper analysis, spending much of its running time tracing the influence of one boy band on the next. These stories rarely intersect in a way that builds a meaningful or compelling perspective, which might leave viewers asking, what’s the point?For some (OK, fine, me), it might be cute to reminisce about how Nick Jonas launched his career as a solo Christian artist, complete with a purity ring. For most, you’ll be left wondering why, in just 30 minutes, we’ve jumped from record-label battles faced by both ’N Sync and the Backstreet Boys, to Donny Osmond’s childhood connection to Michael Jackson, to how Harry Styles successfully started a career outside of One Direction, to Lance Bass coming out, to A.J. McLean’s sobriety. At first, I wondered why so many boy band members addressed were absent from this film. I think I have my answer.Larger Than Life: Reign of the BoybandsNot rated. 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Paramount+. More

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      ‘13: The Musical’ Review: Mild Anxieties in Middle America

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      The Broadway show of the same name gets a Netflix screen adaptation directed by Tamra Davis.“13: The Musical,” a plucky crowd-pleaser about the pressure to put on a blowout bar mitzvah, opens with the young Manhattanite Evan Goldman (Eli Golden) raging at his parents’ ultimate party foul. They’ve divorced, forcing the boy and his mom (Debra Messing) to shift their lives — and his pending bash — to the home of his grandmother (Rhea Perlman) in Walkerton, Ind., a town so small that their arrival triples its Jewish population. Nevertheless, the social-climbing eighth grader is determined to pack his dance floor, even if it means enmeshing himself as a love adviser to the school’s most popular kids (JD McCrary and Lindsey Blackwell) and backing away from his initial friends (Gabriella Uhl and Jonathan Lengel) when he discovers that they’re dorks.Briefly, Evan is concerned that his religion will make him an outsider, especially as one classmate, a terrifically funny shallow snit played by Frankie McNellis, warns the other students that bar mitzvahs are “where they make you talk backwards and everyone gets circumcised.” But once the film checks off the expected city versus country gripes about bagels (none), cows (too many) and the unnerving rural silence (“How can anyone sleep with all this quiet!”), the director Tamra Davis aims to sell the film’s young audience on an inclusive vision of America that quickly soothes any apprehensions of antisemitism, as well as most of the other anxieties of adolescence. The screenwriter Robert Horn not only buffs the bullying subplots from the book of his 2008 Broadway musical (which he co-wrote with Dan Elish) until Evan no longer has to punch a football jock in the nose — he’s made the tensions so subterranean that certain dramatic plot points barely make sense.Still, Davis is a veteran at showcasing youthful singing talent. (Her previous credits include the Britney Spears vehicle “Crossroads,” the hip-hop cult comedy “CB4” and the Hanson music video for “MMMBop.”) She and the cinematographer Adam Santelli turn the frame into a shoe box diorama for the dynamic cast, who belt and dance while staring directly at the camera. While every image is as bright and colorful as a new box of crayons, the kids themselves never come across as artificial, thanks in part to Jamal Sims’ naturalistic but crisp choreography, which emphasizes stomps and leans and long-legged strides.The songs, by Jason Robert Brown, aren’t bad either, particularly a bluesy number crooned by the football squad (“Bad News”), a catty rock ballad backed by a marching band (“Opportunity”) and a new-for-the-screen, finger-snapping charmer where Evan entices his schoolmates to sneak into an R-rated horror movie (“The Bloodmaster”) — a gory flick that traumatizes him and the class far more than anything else happening onscreen.13: The MusicalRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More