Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

A lot of fun.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This was absolutely fantastic. One of the best documentaries I've seen in ages. Certainly one of the best about music. I tried to find more info about the flick, but there's just one PBS interview with the filmmaker. So definitely clue into this if you dig on quirky, honest filmmakers like Les Blank or Ross McElwee. The work is warm and respectful and revealing. Everything a cultural doc should be. Sometimes it seems to come dangerously close to mocking its subjects but then a humanist beat equalizes everything and film skirts back into a position of measured observation. As far as I'm concerned this is up there with "Sweet Grass", "Grey Gardens", "Gimme Shelter", "Sherman's March" and "Harland County, USA". It's just that good.

This film has a lot to say about America, and Americans, at their most sad and most hopeful.The song poem industry can be taken as a metaphor for show business as a whole, or at least most Americans' relationship to it.The most telling thing about the reactions from the aspiring songwriters is not that they feel ripped-off by cynical hucksters. In fact, they have the opposite reaction, mostly. They remain optimistic and continue to cradle the American Dream to their hearts. They're lovely people, and very, deeply American, even if you do want to slap them around so they wake up to reality. But then again, why shatter their dreams? A highly, highly recommended documentary. Especially good for fans of popular music or record collectors.

My favorite documentaries are ones that peek into peoples lives in a way that is totally revealing, non-judgmental, but nonetheless incredibly entertaining. This documentary pays out on all fronts. The focus is on people all over the country who mail in their poem/songs and have them put to music for a fee. Some dream of hitting it big, but most seem happy to just have their words put to music and actually recorded. I really liked the filmmakers treating the subjects with such authenticity. Many small-town Americana type folks who personify what are inexplicably the nooks and crannies of American culture. I loved it and if you like quirky, Errol Morris type documentaries you'll find this entertaining.

I checked this out from the public library, because the cover looked vaguely interesting and there was basically no risk, but for some lost time. And, like someone discovering a song-poem collection in a used-LP bin, I was amazed and amused by this great (and fortunately brief) little film. It's about these people who send in poems or lyrics to a company, which promises to make a song from those words, then asks them to pay the recording cost -- which is how they make money. But the scheme is beside the point. Instead the movie focuses on some of the "poets" who write tunes, almost always with a straight face, with titles like "Non-Violent Tae-Kwon-Do Troopers" and "I Am a Ginseng Digger." The movie also features some of the performers, composers, and producers of these songs (sometimes separate, often not), and even has time for a brief rise-and-fall story regarding one artist that the song-poem cultists and performers all seem to consider a squandered semi-genius. It's a crazy-quilt portrait of low-impact American ambition and creative expression from Joe Public (no, not the early 90s group). A real freakin gem.