Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

"Shut Up and Sing" is a revealing look at the hysteria that surrounded the Dixie Chicks in 2003 after lead singer Natalie Maines took a very brief jab at President George W. Bush in London on the first night of a worldwide concert tour. The new documentary follows the band through the conclusion of that tour, the recording of their next album two years later, and how those seemingly offhanded words wound up changing their careers in between, as well as shifting their fan base far, far to the North. I'll confess I didn't know much about the Dixie Chicks in March 2003, apart from their inescapable cover of "Landslide". However, I spent a lot of time that month driving around the East Coast south of the Mason-Dixon line, listening to talk radio and seeking (what proved to be false) justification for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I heard first-hand a lot of the venom being directed at the group through talk radio and the right-wing blog-o-sphere. "Shut Up & Sing" shows the actual concert footage at which Maines spoke her now-infamous two anti-war sentences, and the resulting furore seems more attributable to the power of right-wing media than to anything intrinsically offensive in what Maines said. "Shut Up & Sing" is told in cinema verite style. There's no narrator, and most of the action unfolds in overheard conversations between the band, their manager, studio engineers, corporate sponsors, and publicists. The movie jumps back and forth several times between the parallel storylines of the 2003 media frenzy and the 2005 recording of their follow-up album. In the Upper West Side theater where I saw the movie, the greatest applause was reserved for Maines' spontaneous cursing out of the President following his ill-chosen words during a Tom Brokaw interview she sees on TV. Also fascinating is a visit to producer Rick Rubin's house as the Chicks try to tease out a new musical direction for their next album following their abandonment by the country radio format. Rubin inadvertently steals the movie for that one scene. Are those rosary beads he was clutching? The film's structure works quite well, as we see the group struggling in equal measures with recording a new album in a new genre, and dealing with the unwanted attention following the media frenzy. It might help to know more about the Dixie Chicks before going on; I learned more about them on Wikipedia after the movie than I did in the theater. Obviously that caution won't be necessary in most of the country, but I live in a city without a country radio station. The movie's ending is bittersweet, with some band members questioning whether the struggle and its effect on their careers was worth it. By the end of the movie I came away with a greater appreciation for their characters, if not necessarily of their music itself. What happened to them was a travesty, but hopefully the new frontiers that subsequently embraced their music (Canada) will remain a strong fan base and continue to support the group.