Truly Dreadful Film

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

This documentary follows Madonna on her 1990 'Blond Ambition' concert tour. Filmed in black and white, with the concert pieces in glittering MTV color, it is an intimate look at the work of the music performer, from a prayer circle with the dancers before each performance to bed games with the dance troupe afterwards. To be honest i do like Madonna as far as singing goes but as a person? She is kinda weird to say the least and this documentary proves that plus it was painfully boring even for a documentary about a person and that's a first. (0/10)

It's 1990 on Madonna's Blond Ambition Tour. She, her circle of dancers, and performers travel from Japan to North America and all around the world. It has behind-the-scenes as well as her concert performances. There are her friends and family. Her brother is hanging around and she goes to her mother's grave. In Toronto, the cops threaten to charge her for indecency. It's mostly filmed in black and white. The thing about Madonna is one is never sure about when the performance starts and ends. I doubt she's completely faking anything but she can be overly dramatic. When cops show up in Toronto, they do imply a threat but one can see a glint in her eyes where she sees an opportunity to rally around the first amendment. There is the dancer faux boyfriend and a girl claiming rape. One can never be sure about anything with Madonna.

I don't know sh*t about Madonna. I know that the media has a fixation on her aging (how dare she have a wrinkle at 57-years-old?), that she almost died at this year's Brit Awards while performing "Living for Love", that she sliced censors in half during her controversial 1994 interview with David Letterman, that Robert Christgau thinks she's a pop genius, that the gays love her, that she's, all right, clinging to her youth. But still, I hardly know anything about Madonna. Maybe I could barely sing the chorus to "Holiday", but that's all. I'd recognize her if she were to walk down my street. I saw her in "Dick Tracy" once. She was pretty good in that.I suppose I was expecting "Truth or Dare" to have a sort of "Vogue" tinged romanticism, painting Madonna as a pop figure still untouchable, like how "Ready to Wear" made the fashion world funny, nowhere near realistic, but was all the better for it. For all the cultural bullshit that misunderstands her, "Truth or Dare" dares you to hate and love the pop superstar at the same time, wanting you to scoff at her need to be the STAR of every moment, wanting you to appreciate her relentless work ethic, her need to be an entertainer at the top of their game. And like all good documentaries (and why this one is so damn good), the film is riveting for everyone, outsiders and insiders alike. I wasn't a Madonna fan before the documentary nor will I be afterward, but as a rock documentary, "Truth or Dare" stands as one of the finest.Recording the entirety of her 1990 Blond Ambition tour, the film is essentially an inside-look into what a day, a night, a week, a month, a year, looks like for Madonna. (Or maybe it just seems that way: a master of camera manipulation, she may just as well be putting on a show.) Photographed in grainy black-and-white, save for the colored (and obligatory) stage performances, "Truth or Dare" is more warty than glamorized, emphasizing her vulnerabilities, need to be the center of attention, and her wicked sense of humor (she seems to laugh more when people are having a hard time than when everyone is having a ball).I couldn't care less about the complicated choreographic sets that circle around renditions of "Like a Virgin", "Express Yourself", "Holiday", among others; what makes "Truth or Dare" engaging is its frank candidness. Behind the scenes, Madonna notices that the majority of her young dancers are insecure and need mothering; strange, she remarks, how she likes to be a matriarch, to give her stage family someone to confide in. We catch glimpses of her short relationship with "Dick Tracy" co-star Warren Beatty, who scoffs at the fact that real-life doesn't seem to matter to her unless it is captured on camera. Cameos abound, featuring pop-ups from Pedro Almodóvar, Kevin Costner, Antonio Banderas, and Al Pacino. But there are three truly great scenes in the film, where Madonna doesn't seem to be putting on a show, where she doesn't seem to be trying to make herself look a certain way for the cameras.Best is her reaction to Kevin Costner, who comes backstage for one show and describes the production as neat; disgusted, she gags, remarking "Anybody who says my show is 'neat' has to go." Later, an old friend (pre-fame old) meets Madonna in the hallway of her hotel, asking her to be the godmother to her soon-to-be born child. Though it is clear that the women were close back in the day, Madonna blows her off; she doesn't want to be a mother any time soon, and she doesn't have time to waste time with non-celebrities from the past. And in one of the closing scenes, she infamously models what a blow job from Madonna would look like on a glass bottle. Minutes later, she describes her true love as Sean Penn, heartbroken, regretful.Fakery of course comes around — the scene where she visits her mother's grave doesn't feel all too sincere, rather the documentarian's hope to make appear feel bare- bones hopeless — but "Truth or Dare", ultimately, is a winning documentary that makes the once chart-dominating pop-star more fascinating, and timeless, than ever.

I watched this movie for the first time in 2009, almost twenty years after its release and this proves I am not a big Madonna fan. In fact, I never particularly liked or disliked her. I thought she was "cool" in "Desperately seeking Susan", but that was the "Into the Groove" time, when she had just started her rise.The "Blonde Ambition" tour was probably the top of Madonna's career, and this would-be documentary shows her at her most unbearable. Somebody mentioned that it shines a light on her "human" side (as if she was some sort of alien), but in truth she comes across as a controlling, pretentious bitch who goes out of her way to humiliate and annoy people. Hardly the best human side one can show. Even the visit to her mother's grave is disgustingly theatrical. Instead of making you feel sorry for the child of five who lost her mum it makes you feel sorry for the spoiled brat she became.Of course we all know that Madonna built her career on sex and the Catholic religion and by now I doubt anybody would be shocked by her swinging crucifix or her masturbation. However, tasteful it was not... and still isn't. The part filmed on stage is disappointing because some of songs performed are just not good, no matter how much sex is thrown in to spice them. The "documentary" part is embarrassing to watch. It was interesting for me to see that Madonna had a crush on Antonio Banderas, but at the time he was married with a pretty Spanish lady (who looked a lot better both of Madonna and Melanie Griffith). Warren Beatty makes the only decent comment about the whole filming, but he is also brushed off and humiliated, not to mention the poor Costner.I am not a Costner fan either, but his comment sounded rather sarcastic to me ("Neat" applied to the overbearing and vulgar show sounds like a sarcastic way to say "It sucked"), but looks like Madonna did not get the joke. She definitely takes herself very seriously when she describes herself as an "artist" who will not change anything in her show, even if she risks to get arrested for "indecent exposure" or any such like - very unlikely - charge.Finally, when she talks to her father she is so arrogant and dismissive that I felt sorry for the poor guy. She even uses the word "chatartic" with the intent of confuse her father; but looks like she herself had no clue as to what that word means.Madonna was an icon of the 80's and early 90's and possibly a decent singer, but for sure she was never a great actress and definitely not somebody with any sense of humor.