As I started viewing this documentary on my local cable provider, I was hoping for an evening packed with musical entertainment and other archived material from the Apollo's illustrious 100-plus-years past. Unfortunately, as quickly became apparent, we are treated to a preachy cultural awareness exercise, produced during the hyper-sensitive days of the Trump presidency when America seemed on the verge of a return to the Jim Crow era. At least half of this production is comprised of contemporary poetic readings, inspirational song and dance by newcomers, and interviews with today's battlers in the culture wars that tend to become cliched for those of us who have been exposed to many lectures on BLM topics. After viewing this documentary, I read a press interview with the director where he described the great challenge he faced because of a scarcity of actual film and video footage footage from the Apollo's past, due in part to the rocky financial history of the venue. What we therefore find is that many of the clips of performances by celebrated artists contained in this documentary were actually recorded at other locations. For example, I noticed that a vintage clip of the Temptations performing "My Girl" was lifted from a video of a 1960s Detroit-area teen dance party TV show that I came across on YouTube only a couple of weeks ago. This documentary neglects to mention that a number of top white musicians appeared at the Apollo in its heyday, or that Jimi Hendrix had a ground-breaking early NYC show at the Apollo in 1967 (maybe Jimi was too "rock 'n roll" for the producers of this), or that Bob Marley also starred at the venue at a pivotal point in his career. In line with the "culture wars" theme of this documentary, attention is also devoted to the urban upheavals and rioting of the 1960-70s, and the terrible prejudices black musicians faced when touring across America....topics that are frankly dealt with much more interestingly in other documentaries that address these problems in greater detail. Anyway, I'll give "The Apollo" a 5 out of 10 for the noble effort, despite my temptation to fast-forward through parts of it!
