MOVIE REVIEW
“Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me”
Grade: A-
Starring Glen Campbell, Kim Campbell, Ashley Campbell and Bruce Springsteen. Directed by James Keach.
Rated PG for thematic elements and brief language. Check listings for theaters. 1 hour, 44 minutes.
Bottom line: A cheerful and triumphant film about a musician struggling with Alzheimer's
By Roger Moore
Tribune News Service
“Cheerful” and “triumphant” aren’t words that come to mind when you think of Alzheimer’s, the debilitating illness that destroys memory, mind and body. But darned if country star Glen Campbell doesn’t manage that in “Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me.”
It’s a moving documentary that follows him through the last halfway good year or so of his life. He was diagnosed in the spring of 2011. He hit the road later that year, a decision with the potential to tarnish his legacy.
When actor-turned-director James Keach films Campbell and his wife, Kim, on the sofa for a session of home movies viewing, he blurts out, “Who IS that?” at every face that pops up.
“That’s you, honey.”
And what’re they’re doing with all these cameras?
“It’s a movie abut you.”
“No kidding!” he grins. Reflexively, a joke comes to mind. “I’ll be me!”
Keach sums up Campbell’s career through clips of his concerts, his old TV show and his guest shots on “The Tonight Show” and interviews scores of performers who put the 70-something legend on a pedestal. He follows Campbell from his doctor’s office to the Mayo Clinic. And Keach captures a 100-plus date farewell tour that was both a victory lap and an object lesson in the progression of Alzheimer’s.
Those performances — filled with happy accidents, meandering, complaining monologues and still-stunning musicianship, are where the “triumphant” kicks in. He may not be able to remember the names of his three good-looking, musically-adept kids, who play in his band. But for much of this 2011-2012 tour, Campbell was in tune and teleprompter sharp.
Keach’s film relies most heavily on Kim, Campbell’s fourth and final wife, a stunning blond who is Campbell’s voice for the film, explaining the decision to let him tour, the various issues with his illness and its treatment, the symptoms we see onstage and off.
But Campbell himself is just inspiring. The public may have wearied of him 30 years ago, a hard-drinking womanizer who never measured up to the corny, wholesome “gee whiz” image, something the film barely mentions. But onstage, laughing at the miscues he doesn’t realize he’s made, losing track of what he’s supposed to be singing or doing, and then getting it back through his firmest memories — his songs — is amazing to see.
Keach wisely saves some surprises for us, ones beyond “The Last Show” and a trip to the studio to record “The Last Song.” Those come from the peers who reveal how their lives have also been touched by the disease.
And through it all, for as long as he can manage it, the Rhinestone Cowboy croons, picks and grins and works the audience, just an old pro putting on a show, the last memory he has to share with us.
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