I recall the Milli Vanilli saga from back in the day… and my indifference and skepticism when the news broke. In my naivete, I wondered what the big deal was… the catchy tunes remained catchy tunes. Someone else sang them… so hoist them up on your shoulders instead. Give them the Grammy. But, alas, I guess I never subscribed to Tiger Beat and just didn’t understand the idol worship (still don’t, not really).

This new Paramount+ doc covers Rob and Fab’s rise to fame and their fall… because (spoiler alert) they were lip syncing over someone else’s vocal track. And they won a Grammy… and then they took all the blame.

This is a pretty solid documentary that covers a lot of material I didn’t know (and certainly didn’t need to know). They interview a lot of the people involved… including 50% of the duo, record execs, the actual singers on those tracks, and Downtown Julie Brown. They didn’t pin down the repeat offender Svengali producer of the whole turgid affair… or the fans or the press who basically put all the blame on the two guys with the least amount of personal responsibility in the whole stupid affair.

The best part was watching the press feeding frenzy as they transferred their own guilt at being willfully fooled by the pop industry onto these two useful idiots. I’d seen clips from that event (mostly as part of late night jokes) but I’d never seen how ugly it got.

So it’s a good, informative documentary about a subject for which I had a great deal of cynicism. If you were a hardcore fan back in the day, you’ll probably enjoy this look behind the curtain. If you only know the duo from jokes or have never heard of them at all, it’s worth a look too.

Score: 81