In my eyes, there are two kinds of people in this world: people that like Katy Perry’s music, and people that don’t. I will admit, I am a big fan of her music; along with other fun/cheesy pop music, it makes me feel good. The beauty of this movie is that I believe if you can tolerate her hits (Firework, California Gurls, Last Friday Night, etc), you will enjoy this movie thoroughly.
First things first, this isn’t a non-fiction movie; it’s a documentary style film. You go along with her during her year long, worldwide tour, and that is where you learn to appreciate what’s behind Katy Perry. Yes, she is a hot chick, with Christian parents who ‘went wild’. She is also someone who was dropped by a few labels, had people trying to fit her into the cookie cutter pop star mold, and had very few people who believed in her. With a lot of footage from before “I Kissed a Girl” launched her into pop stardom, you feel her pain.
Now that she is this insanely famous pop star, you might think she walks into the arena, has a sound check and performs for 2 hours and then retreats to her Hollywood mansion. This movie dispels that myth. She has a hand in every single aspect that goes into the Katy Perry brand. She’s extremely driven and hardworking, as shown by footage following her around on tour. From meet and greets before and after shows, working out to keep that lovely voluptuous body(!), input on her wild and crazy costumes and stage designs, she really does do it all.
She does all of that, all while balancing her personal life. She’s very family oriented, with her sister still working with her, and having a very good relationship with her parents and brother, but it doesn’t end there. A lot of the people that surround her are the people that were there when she was in a small venue with only a guitar and a mic. The film also shows her relationship and breakup (either I teared up a little, that or some dust flew into my eye) with her ex-husband, Russell Brand, including some dicey moments before one of her shows.
So to sum it up…while there is a good amount of footage of her in concert, the behind the scenes look at a year in the life of Katy Perry, one of the hardest working people in music, it gave me a new appreciation for her, and I hope might land her some new fans.
I’m not going to give it a letter grade or assign it an arbitrary amount of stars, I will though, give it my highest recommendation.
