Strong and Moving!

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

The Who at the Isle of Wight festival in 1970. This concert and movie captures The Who at their peak.The band had just released Tommy, their classic, and seminal, rock opera and at the concert they reproduce it, note for note. It's not all Tommy, however, there's a few other classics of theirs, eg My Generation, Magic Bus, I Can't Explain, plus covers, which were a staple of their show. Here they cover Summertime Blues, Shaking' All Over, Spoonful, Twist and Shout and Young Man's Blues.Great performance by the band, with Pete Townshend to the fore, but with Keith Moon the undoubtable and unforgettable court jester. Plus, he sure knows how to play the drums...Ultimately, however, it feels like there is something missing, something that was needed to push this concert into the pantheon of recorded concerts. Maybe it was that some of the songs just feel lacking, and not worthy of a The Who's "best of to that point". Heaven and Hell, I Don't Even Know Myself and Water seem out of place with all the great songs. I could have done without Young Man's Blues too.Maybe it is the restrictive nature of playing a rock opera from start to finish - there's very little room for detours and jams.Overall, still a good concert, but needed something more to make it great.

The Isle of Wight festival in 1970 is often regarded as one of The Who's finest performances: after almost two years of steady touring behind 'Tommy,' the group was in peak shape, so well-rehearsed and in tune with each other as performers that not even their reckless antics and often bitter interpersonal animosity could undermine their virtuosity as a live act. 'Tommy' made superstars of The Who, but their identity as the inventors of 'rock opera' often obscures the fact that they were also essentially the inventors of punk, and were, at heart, always the thinking man's hard rock band.'Listening to You' catches The Who at their best, warts and all. The sound mix is typically bass-heavy: guitarist/songwriter Pete Townshend and bassist John Entwistle were perennially at odds over the latter's tendency to play too loud, and though Entwistle was perhaps the group's most inventive and virtuosic instrumentalist, the guitar work is frequently inaudible beneath the bass, which tends to undermine the recording's overall quality. The editing is questionable, particularly for Who purists: director Murray Lerner falls into the typical tendency to place the 'Tommy' sequence at the end of the film, when in actuality it took up the mid-section of the performance. This editorial decision is particularly glaring and nonsensical on the DVD, as it includes an interview with Townshend in which he explains how the group intentionally placed 'Tommy' in the middle of the set so as to capitalize on the mesmerizing effect of its climax to unite the band with the audience for the final act. The camera work is limited to three angles--center-stage, stage-left, and stage-right--and thus lacks the scope of the Woodstock film and other premier rock films of the era such as Martin Scorsese's and The Band's 'The Last Waltz.' In some ways this limits the film, but it also allows for a more direct and authentic impression of what it might have been like to be there.This is not a 'great concert film' in the same sense as 'Woodstock' or 'The Last Waltz,' but it catches the group at what most of its members considered to be their peak as artists and performers. Murray Lerner wisely includes a great deal of the group's on-stage banter, though a little knowledge of the chaotic nature of the festival--where over half a million fans crowded onto the island and perpetuated the pseudo-revolutionary nonsense of the era by gate-crashing and harassing the performers for the great sin of expecting people to pay for tickets and behave with civility--is necessary to understand the tone of the commentary. Townshend gets in a few good digs at the crowd--introducing live staple 'Young Man Blues,' he remarks 'blues, for the people who paid to get in!'--reminding the contemporary viewer that the Who's irreverence and cynicism extended to idiotic followers of the zeitgeist as well as to the uptight, bourgeois establishment.There are some glaring omissions--'A Quick One' and 'Amazing Journey/Sparks' most notably--but the disc includes less frequently filmed gems such as 'Water' and 'I Don't Even Know Myself' to make up for the absences somewhat.For Who neophytes, 'The Kids Are Alright' is probably a better introduction to the group as live performers, but, even given its deficiencies, 'Listening to You' will not likely disappoint anyone interested in the music of the era or the art of live rock performance.

I feel that this is the best Who concert film that I have seen yet. The original Who are all in check, doing various classics like Summertime Blues, I Can't Explain, The Magic Bus and My Generation, each a little different for the good. And, there is a majority of the original Rock opera Tommy, performed soley by the Who in a rare sight (unlike the one in 1989, where it was 3 out of 4 and with guests). Beautiful rock on the small screen by one of the best groups ever. By the way, there is even some unintentional comedy from Keith Moon! A+

This movie was not made by Who fans. Most of the great moments that fans will look forward to in the half-hour Tommy medley are simply missed or glossed over: In Christmas, they didn't show Daltry's screams after the line "Tommy doesn't know what day it is...", they showed almost *no* Townsend guitar shots in Pinball Wizard, there were excess crowd shots during the best moments of Go to the Mirror, and worst of all, in the second half of We're Not Gonna Take It (Listening to You), they robbed us of almost every shot of Pete's blazing guitar chords. Huge chunks of the film are shot from in back of the band. It's a very frustrating film to watch, and doesn't deliver the goods. I don't know if director Murry Lerner is just not a Who fan, or worse, for him at least, if he *is* a Who fan and this is all the *eight* cameras could deliver for him. To its credit, there are some rare numbers before Tommy, as well as some faves, that are very well shot, and sometimes the editing is brilliant. This might be enough to make some viewers happy, as long as you're not anticipating Tommy. The sound overall was mediocre in the transmission I watched from DirecTV; it may be different on video or DVD.