Enormous: The Gorge Story

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DM Very well done! Interesting view into the making of the Gorge over the years and the people involved. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 07/22/21 Full Review Audience Member Love the place and the documentary Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 10/17/23 Full Review Audience Member It would be totally unfair to compare this documentary to Woodstock: the movie, but it does illuminate the severe shortcomings of Enormous: the Gorge Story. Writers (and documentary filmmakers) are perennially instructed to "show, don't tell", and therein lies one difference between these two films. Enormous is largely an endless series of people telling us how wonderful the gorge amphitheater venue is, while almost none of it simply shows us. And those commenters just go on and on and on telling us. More than a couple make the insightful remark that "It's so great I really can't put it into words." If you hope that the film will highlight the music, you will be disappointed there, also. Concert footage is in every instance cut very short to, once again (and again), tell us how great it was. Bob Dylan got about 15 seconds of blurred and muddy performance before we get to hear how much his presence boosted sales. The best music was an unknown duo singing alongside the credits. They actually get to finish the whole song. The human interest angle is overdone with an episodic recounting by a woman about attending with her sister who later died of cancer. She is not especially articulate and her showing us blurry photo souvenirs and telling us how great it was is not "showing." She does not have much to say and does so over and over. It even becomes a little uncomfortable as the film makers seem to be a little desperate for the human angle and seem to be least partially exploiting her for the film. In the first half hour the venue and its origins are of some interest and you get the feeling that it really might have been special to be there. But as the years go by it gets bigger, more commercial and more exploitative of the setting (dynamiting the hillside to enlarge the seating?). The overall impression is that the whole film is simply a promotional device for the music festivals and their promoters - a big advertisement as a teaser for what you might actually hear there. No thanks. Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 02/25/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Enormous: The Gorge Story

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