Coachella: The Film (2006)
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If you have only two free days in a year to soak in popular music, there's no more effective venue than the annual weekend-long Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Widely considered the best and most diverse outdoor concert in the United States, Coachella draws massive crowds to the idyllic Empire Polo Grounds in Indio, California each spring. If you're lazy and want to stay home, this concert film -- a montage of performances and interviews from Coachellas past -- isn't the solution. Director Drew Thomas does a commendable job of capturing the personalities of the onstage performers. Wayne Coyne doing a "man of the people" routine while rolling around in a plastic bubble and maudlin vocalist Morrissey hugging a fan who evaded security showcase the unique, oversized musicians who deservedly make Coachella so popular. Like Coyne says before the Flaming Lips' performance, "It won't change the world, but it will make it feel like we're all one big Coachella family."

But ultimately, the film falls flat on the small screen. No movie can capture the thrill of actually being in a raucous crowd, and Thomas wisely aims for a more stylized interpretation of the event. Cameras pan over performers on massive stages, and the high-tech lighting effects turn the audience into a sea of multi-hued, over-stimulated revelers. The sound quality is better than any first-row concert experience, but the DVD (like the concert itself) only highlights the fact that, for all the credence it gives to the counterculture, it's not a happening on the level of Woodstock.

For a festival with such great second stage talent, the second DVD is wildly disappointing. Short, mostly throwaway interviews take up the bulk of the disc, including the Dresden Dolls while putting on makeup and doing vocal exercises, and a random fan from Mexico talking about his troubles crossing the border. A gallery of artsy concert photos saves the bonus footage from being worthless, but with so much extra space, including additional concert clips seems like a no-brainer.

by Pat Sisson