tl;dr
olivia’s talent and (especially) energy shines throughout the show. a fairly standard concert movie production with a few standout shots that is tremendously hurt by poor crowd vs band sound mixing
—————————
since this is a concert movie, i’ll review this in 3 parts: the movie, the concert, the music
1. The Movie
The movie itself had a few notable and unique shots. In particular, the production excels during Vampire, Lacy, Teenage Dream, and the few songs where she’s floating on a moon.
Vampire’s shot from behind looking into the crowd as it dims into a backlit spotlight on her as the song starts gave me chills. Literal chills.
Lacy (at least I think it was Lacy) being an entire song where she’s laying down looking up with relatively no motion could easily get boring, but I personally felt captivated throughout the whole thing - especially thanks to the editing. The cutting between a full top down view and the crowd and camera movement along with the song was well done.
Teenage dream is a MUST WATCH for anyone who is an Olivia fan. The screen behind her plays a ton of footage of her as a kid learning to sing and dance, and it is so cute and inspiring. When I first saw that I thought to myself “I hope they full screen some of the footage for the movie!” and they did!! Also, they end this song with the cutest note ever from young Olivia and how she’s excited to perform for her family. 10/10 would rewatch this part - it basically made me cry
There’s also a few songs where she’s on a floating platform in the shape of a moon going across the huge stadium. There are some purple stars im the bgd and I’m almost positive they’re CGI but honestly no idea. It looked gorgeous though. Very ethereal.
Also one really cool shot that I loved was the camera below the transparent glass that Olivia and co were standing and dancing on. Olivia loved looking into the camera and interacting with it which definitely added a pro to the movie vs live experience
Also, through her emotional songs, it was very cute any time they cut to the audience and people were just bawling their hearts out
Now for the bad…
Bro… who decided to let the fans be THIS loud in a concert movie? Maybe they wanted to underscore the energy of the audience, but it ends up just making the music itself feel pretty muted? Like you can literally hear 7+ times people obnoxiously screaming “I love you Olivia!!” in like the middle of songs or in-between them. I might also just be extra pissed because my favorite song, favorite crime (from Sour), had a ton of fans doing blood curling screams through an otherwise emotional and heavy song. Like wtf 😂 Turn the crowd down when she’s singing. I get it, she asks the fans to sing a lot. Like at least one-three parts of every song she prompts them to sing, so maybe it would be weird to have the crowd be quiet then loud, idk. I honestly almost stopped like 30 minutes in because of it. Especially because the crowd is sometimes delayed by like 200ms so they just sound like a poor echo of what she’s singing.
I did enjoy the credit scenes though going through her warmups before the show. Would recommend fans check it out too - her vocal warmups look fun. Wish they showed more of this!
2. The concert
Olivia gives biiiig Taylor Swift performance energy. From her facial expressions, to choreo, to cheesy stories to introduce the next song, I felt like I was watching a more emo/edgy/rock-bandy Taylor Swift. She also loves to say “shit” to everything lol. Like easily said that 15 times throughout the concert after every song
A big negative is I wish Olivia would let her emotional songs sit with more emotional energy though. She pretty much brought her rock song energy to every song. Like she would be singing really emotional and heartfelt lyrics and then point at the crowd and go “Hello!!!” all smiley and happy. She would also go “sing it LA!” in a really happy and energetic tone during some really emotional parts of the songs. Definitely a bit whiplashy there.
Her energy though was off the charts. During all of her rock band songs she was basically jumping and kicking the whole time. There were a few moments where you could tell it really affected her breath control and singing but overall she brought great energy to the concert
I was also pleasantly surprised with how many Sour songs we got, especially for a GUTS tour. Like there were 4-5 Sour songs (all bangers). Though I feel like she didn’t play all of the GUTS songs?? I’d need to double check
Also I feel like the GUTS jewelry was not as impactful as I thought it would be. The fits for this era are just not as iconic as Sour and the long arm sleeves she always used. The jewelry is just too hard to see and she basically never emphasized that she was wearing it
Also, shoutout to the person who gave her the GUTS glasses at the end. Made the ending of this show amazing as she was leaving
And total side note, but when she shoutout her backup vocalists, they sang the “how do they lie how do they lie” which is my FAVORITE part of vampire. I loved this part way too much for such a small moment haha
3. The music
Olivia is an incredible vocalist. There is no surprise she’s one of the top artists in the world. I do feel like this concert didn’t show that to the best of its abilities though. Perhaps it was all the jumping around, poor sound mixing, or mismatched energy during ballads, but she can sing much better than what this movie showed imo. I did enjoy some of the musical liberties she took and how she slightly changed up some of her songs. Too bad it was ruined by the crowd singing the original and basically sounding louder than her. I did enjoy the anecdotes she provided for some of the songs though, always fun to hear.
Overall, the music was good, but I’d rather listen to the studio version. Which isn’t true for some of her other live performances!!!
Shoutout to (spoiler) Chappell Roan though and the whole HOTTOGO performance. She sounded incredible
tl;dr
olivia’s talent and (especially) energy shines throughout the show. a fairly standard concert movie production with a few standout shots that is tremendously hurt by poor crowd vs band sound mixing
—————————
since this is a concert movie, i’ll review this in 3 parts: the movie, the concert, the music
1. The Movie
The movie itself had a few notable and unique shots. In particular, the production excels during Vampire, Lacy, Teenage Dream, and the few songs where she’s floating on a moon.
Vampire’s shot from behind looking into the crowd as it dims into a backlit spotlight on her as the song starts gave me chills. Literal chills.
Lacy (at least I think it was Lacy) being an entire song where she’s laying down looking up with relatively no motion could easily get boring, but I personally felt captivated throughout the whole thing - especially thanks to the editing. The cutting between a full top down view and the crowd and camera movement along with the song was well done.
Teenage dream is a MUST WATCH for anyone who is an Olivia fan. The screen behind her plays a ton of footage of her as a kid learning to sing and dance, and it is so cute and inspiring. When I first saw that I thought to myself “I hope they full screen some of the footage for the movie!” and they did!! Also, they end this song with the cutest note ever from young Olivia and how she’s excited to perform for her family. 10/10 would rewatch this part - it basically made me cry
There’s also a few songs where she’s on a floating platform in the shape of a moon going across the huge stadium. There are some purple stars im the bgd and I’m almost positive they’re CGI but honestly no idea. It looked gorgeous though. Very ethereal.
Also one really cool shot that I loved was the camera below the transparent glass that Olivia and co were standing and dancing on. Olivia loved looking into the camera and interacting with it which definitely added a pro to the movie vs live experience
Also, through her emotional songs, it was very cute any time they cut to the audience and people were just bawling their hearts out
Now for the bad…
Bro… who decided to let the fans be THIS loud in a concert movie? Maybe they wanted to underscore the energy of the audience, but it ends up just making the music itself feel pretty muted? Like you can literally hear 7+ times people obnoxiously screaming “I love you Olivia!!” in like the middle of songs or in-between them. I might also just be extra pissed because my favorite song, favorite crime (from Sour), had a ton of fans doing blood curling screams through an otherwise emotional and heavy song. Like wtf 😂 Turn the crowd down when she’s singing. I get it, she asks the fans to sing a lot. Like at least one-three parts of every song she prompts them to sing, so maybe it would be weird to have the crowd be quiet then loud, idk. I honestly almost stopped like 30 minutes in because of it. Especially because the crowd is sometimes delayed by like 200ms so they just sound like a poor echo of what she’s singing.
I did enjoy the credit scenes though going through her warmups before the show. Would recommend fans check it out too - her vocal warmups look fun. Wish they showed more of this!
2. The concert
Olivia gives biiiig Taylor Swift performance energy. From her facial expressions, to choreo, to cheesy stories to introduce the next song, I felt like I was watching a more emo/edgy/rock-bandy Taylor Swift. She also loves to say “shit” to everything lol. Like easily said that 15 times throughout the concert after every song
A big negative is I wish Olivia would let her emotional songs sit with more emotional energy though. She pretty much brought her rock song energy to every song. Like she would be singing really emotional and heartfelt lyrics and then point at the crowd and go “Hello!!!” all smiley and happy. She would also go “sing it LA!” in a really happy and energetic tone during some really emotional parts of the songs. Definitely a bit whiplashy there.
Her energy though was off the charts. During all of her rock band songs she was basically jumping and kicking the whole time. There were a few moments where you could tell it really affected her breath control and singing but overall she brought great energy to the concert
I was also pleasantly surprised with how many Sour songs we got, especially for a GUTS tour. Like there were 4-5 Sour songs (all bangers). Though I feel like she didn’t play all of the GUTS songs?? I’d need to double check
Also I feel like the GUTS jewelry was not as impactful as I thought it would be. The fits for this era are just not as iconic as Sour and the long arm sleeves she always used. The jewelry is just too hard to see and she basically never emphasized that she was wearing it
Also, shoutout to the person who gave her the GUTS glasses at the end. Made the ending of this show amazing as she was leaving
And total side note, but when she shoutout her backup vocalists, they sang the “how do they lie how do they lie” which is my FAVORITE part of vampire. I loved this part way too much for such a small moment haha
3. The music
Olivia is an incredible vocalist. There is no surprise she’s one of the top artists in the world. I do feel like this concert didn’t show that to the best of its abilities though. Perhaps it was all the jumping around, poor sound mixing, or mismatched energy during ballads, but she can sing much better than what this movie showed imo. I did enjoy some of the musical liberties she took and how she slightly changed up some of her songs. Too bad it was ruined by the crowd singing the original and basically sounding louder than her. I did enjoy the anecdotes she provided for some of the songs though, always fun to hear.
Overall, the music was good, but I’d rather listen to the studio version. Which isn’t true for some of her other live performances!!!
Shoutout to (spoiler) Chappell Roan though and the whole HOTTOGO performance. She sounded incredible
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