Of course the music of John Williams is the soundtrack of my life… if you’re reading this, it’s probably made a huge impact on you too. Jaws, Star Wars, Superman, Close Encounters, ET, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, and onwards to Harry Potter and more. It’s almost amazing he was making iconic themes in the 70s as well as the 2000s.

This Disney+ documentary is about John Williams and his scores… not only his work on those iconic failms, but his entry as a jazz pianist and then his daily grind of dozens of tv show themes in the 60s, and then onto his major works plus the compositions he did for himself. Plus we get the usual kind of of biography of him and has family.

Frankly, if this doc was just a movie-to-movie rundown of all the music for all the great films, those tears that kept welling up in my eyes would net this film five stars. How can you argue greatness? But as a doc about the man himself, it loses some points. Which is a very rude thing to say but, really, it’s a Disney documentary and if there are any demons, they weren’t goin go talk about them. But I doubt there are demons, I think he’s just a guy who loves music. No drama.

We get a decent number of interviews from his family, Spielberg, Lucas, Ron Howard, Chris Columbus, JJ Abrams, and others. We also hear from famous musicians like Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, and… the guy from Coldplay (Chris Marten). Oh, and Seth MacFarlane.

So this is a successful doc but not an amazing one. The soundtracks are the amazing works embedded in a perfect good biographical documentary.

Score: 84