{"id":25889,"date":"2013-09-02T12:49:23","date_gmt":"2013-09-02T16:49:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=25889"},"modified":"2013-09-02T12:49:23","modified_gmt":"2013-09-02T16:49:23","slug":"one-direction-this-is-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2013\/09\/one-direction-this-is-us\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cOne Direction: This Is Us\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cOne Direction: This Is Us\u201d is a concert movie, so it doesn\u2019t have to play by the same rules as other movies. There\u2019s no pressure for it to be clever or exciting. All the movie promises is One Direction \u2013 the British boy band consisting of Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson. The film has a lot of One Direction, so if nothing else the film delivers what it promises. As I am not obsessed with One Direction, I am not the target audience for this movie. But at least I got to see it with a very responsive audience (mostly teenage girls, and yes, I was very much out of place) Bear that in mind as I share the following thoughts:<\/p>\n

-The most popular member of the band by far is Harry Styles. The audience squealed for him even when he was talking in voiceover as opposed to singing. He\u2019s popular now, but I doubt that in ten years he\u2019ll be the artist that Justin Timberlake turned out to be. Then again, I never would have guessed in 2003 that Justin Timberlake would turn out to be the artist he is now.<\/p>\n

-Though the audience reaction was largely positive (cheers and squeals), there was one massive booing. It came before the movie in a Diet Coke ad starring Styles\u2019 ex-girlfriend Taylor Swift. I never thought I\u2019d see an audience side against Taylor like that. It\u2019s officially time for her to move on from her image as a jilted lover.<\/p>\n

-The film is roughly a third musical performances, a third footage of the members goofing around, and a third talk of how great it is to be in One Direction. They really overdo it on that last part. Of course it\u2019s great to be in One Direction, it\u2019s a lifetime of fame and fortune for performing pop songs. There\u2019s the slightest talk of early mornings and hard rehearsals, but that\u2019s just to appease detractors who insist that they have it entirely on Easy Street. While I wouldn\u2019t wish misery on any of the members, I did have a chuckle as I imagined one of them whining incessantly just to be different.<\/p>\n

-There\u2019s a lot of emphasis on the role Simon Cowell played in the members\u2019 careers after they got cut from \u201cThe X Factor\u201d in 2010. I guess Cowell learned from the success of people like Jennifer Hudson and Chris Daughtry that there\u2019s a lot of potential in people who lose on his shows.<\/p>\n

-I was taken off guard about halfway through the movie when the group launched into a cover of Wheatus\u2019s \u201cTeenage Dirtbag.\u201d That song came out when I was the same age as a lot of One Direction fans. It was creepy that I could sing along to this one and most of the audience couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

-The film is obviously short on suspense, but I found something to give me anxiety anyway. I wondered if the final performance of the movie would be \u201cWhat Makes You Beautiful,\u201d the group\u2019s most famous song, or \u201cBest Song Ever,\u201d recently voted Song of the Summer at the MTV Video Music Awards. One song serves as the film\u2019s grand finale, the other is relegated to playing over the credits without performance footage. Whatever your thoughts on this movie, you have to admit it\u2019s a bad idea not to feature a performance of such a popular song.<\/p>\n

These are the thoughts that got a bored adult through \u201cOne Direction: This Is Us.\u201d The film is quite agreeable in that \u201cglorified commercial\u201d sort of way. If you\u2019re a fan of One Direction, you\u2019ll find a lot to like. If you\u2019re seeing the movie with a fan of One Direction, you\u2019ll probably like that they\u2019re finding a lot to like. But if you have no interest in One Direction and out of sick curiosity you see this movie, you\u2019ll only want to head in One Direction \u2013 to the theater exit.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne Direction: This Is Us\u201d is rated PG for mild language. Its running time is 92 minutes.<\/p>\n

Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cOne Direction: This Is Us\u201d is a concert movie, so it doesn\u2019t have to play by the same rules as other movies. There\u2019s no pressure for… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25889"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}