Well Deserved Praise

Sadly Over-hyped

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

REM's Tourfilm should have been a resounding success, but it ends up instead as a definitive suck-mess. The camera work is typical late-80's, early 90's "mtv-style" which means lots of camera movement and lots of quick editing.While this might be all well and good if there is some intelligence behind the design, the cameras seem to be haphazardly moving with no real focus and the choice of any given camera at any given time seems to be based upon which camera is offering the absolute worst shot.The concert also suffers a terrible start-stop problem and there is never any real flow to the proceedings. On the other hand, while the sound is not exactly first-rate, the concert is--REM is in top form. That makes this disc probably worth it in the end for die-hard fans, but, at the same time, offers much frustration over just how bad the production is.

Tourfilm is perhaps Declan Quinn's best piece of work, capturing a band at their artistic peak and loaning his vision to a film that preserves them there. The techniques used here would transfer into his latter work in "Leaving Las Vegas."

This tourfilm is terrible! I'm afraid that docu/concerts don't get much worse than this. I thought Led Zep's 'The Song Remains The Same' was bad enuff, but this is absolutely gruelling! From the start of the concert to the end, this is tripe! I was a longterm REM fan, but after I watched this I nearly topped myself! The sound is terrible throughout all the songs and the direction doesn't get any worse than this. TRADGEDY!

I'm surprised that no one else has commented on this concert film. I saw R.E.M. on the Green Tour in Minneapolis in '89 and this video always brings back great memories from those college days. What's cool about this doc is that the impressionistic video montages projected behind the band are interspersed before and after each song played. There are no interviews with the band members here, but as was always the case with early R.E.M. songs, the music speaks for itself. Recommended for any R.E.M. fan.