Ma vie avec les Pogues : L'épopée sauvage de Shane MacGowan

I don't know where to start. It's an absolute car crash of cringe. When it's not fawning over this obnoxious, spoilt manchild, it's schizophrenicly telegraphing how petulant and awful he is as a human. I felt at times equally as repulsed by the documentarys subject as I felt sorry for him. A fair share of the audio is unintelligible and indecipherable meandering and coupled with the uneven, confused edit, it makes for a very disappointing watch. The plethora of ten star reviews above also raise flags with their tonal similarity.

A sublime and transcendent experience for fans missing the glorious Celtic romps of the Pogues in their prime. Director Temple wildly enhances the underwhelming interviews with a mostly ruined, but still fascinating, Shane MacGowan with psychedelic animation, heavenly black and white Irish pastoral scenes, and an engaging trove of archival footage that includes Shane dancing in the front row of a Sex Pistols' show. Gets to the very heart of Shane and connects all the essential dots ultimately revealing a brave and free spirit who was ripped away as a child into the devastating whirlwinds of his era yet managed somehow to ride them all out.

I was expecting a deep dive into the history of MacGowan, as well as The Pogues, and Irish music of the 60s-80s period. What I got was a mish mash of old interviews with Shane, mixed with the occasional camera pan to him falling asleep. The names of his band members were mentioned no more than once, if at all. Images and video clips of The Dubliners were plentiful, but again, the band or its members didn't get a mention, no room to pay a quick homage to Luke Kelly? Pathetic, and disrespectful. (of course Bono gets a nod, really?) The one joy I got from this was finding out how supportive Shane was of the IRA, more than I'd realised, and this left me very pleased. Everything else had been covered in previous documentaries.

Definitely the best music docu I've ever seen. Really thorough look into Shane's life from being a wee boy, God knows how he survived! I'll be honest & admit I'm not a huge fan of The Pogues music but found myself singing along and swaying on my chair, I just got lost in the magic of it all. This has got to win some sort of award. It's incredible! Well done to Shane, Victoria, Johnny, Stephen & Julien. 10 out of 10.

I'm not so sure what they were going for here. The honestly is refreshing and you see what Shane is really like which is a bit of a bully. A sort of plastic republican IRA wannabe who was born in England whether he likes it or not. The only person who stood up to him was Gerry Adams who is likeable and comes over as wise. Depp was unbearable and it seemed like he was trying to put on an Irish accent. Even Brendan Behan softened up as he got older and proclaimed that: 'The older I get, the more I see sense of my grandmother's statement: 'Do you know the difference between having an Irish Republic and being a section of the British Empire?' 'No,' says I, 'what is it?' 'You'll get an eviction order written in Irish with a harp, rather than one written in English with the lion and the unicorn.' Confessions of An Irish Rebel, p134 (1965) Overall a disappointing film with little to no mention of the Pogues (who were mostly - and thus probably inconveniently - English) who arguably helped solidify him as a legend in the first place.

Predominantly compiled from (excellent) old footage that fans will be at least familiar with, there is plenty of eye & ear candy here nonetheless, and it's great to see Shane so sprightly - bouncing all over the place, quick-witted, & a testament to the fact that the doctors were wrong all along - drink and drugs being no more harmless than a bag of smarties.

This is one of the best documentaries about a musical artist that I have ever seen. An absolute must watch, regardless of whether you are a fan of Shane McGowan and The Pogues.