Critics reviews

The electric, inventive energy of the film makes it even less believable that it should have been Demme's last, but if these shots of hammers and forklifts and pulleys had to be his closing coda, perhaps it's an appropriate one: a collection of scenes showing all the tireless, good-humored effort and craftsmanship it takes to make a feature-length entertainment seem so graceful and so effortless.

The number of moving parts in Justin Timberlake's stage show is so overwhelming that you can have a grand time watching the concert film Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids with the sound muted, marveling at the expressionistic assembly of moving glass catwalks and geodesic screens that fragment and distort pointillist projections of faces.

It begins with a full-stage wide shot: our man's alone in the centre of the frame, perfectly miniscule, as this colossal silhouette's cast against the white-canvas backdrop behind him. Then the lighting changes—a lower-spotlight reaches up and cradles Timberlake's face from below—and Demme cuts to a medium shot. Suddenly JT fills the screen, bobbing up and down with boyish glee. From grandeur to intimacy in an instant! It's really something. And to me that's director and star in harmony.

There are real, total aesthetic pleasures to be found in this film, well beyond what I might have noticed initially. And with that in mind it's important to recognize that the design of the stage show isn't Jonathan Demme's, but one by Timberlake and his team. Demme is filming only what has already been constructed by Timberlake. If one is going to call Demme the director of this film, then one has to call Timberlake the director as well.

As colourful and fun as a candy-coated hallucination. Pleasure isn't apolitical; in a year where the garish gold and showy jingoism of Trump's Republican National Convention provided the unmistakable image of rising fascism, the human weirdness of the Ross brothers and Byrne and the joyous invention of Demme and Timberlake felt like dance dance revolutions.

Jonathan Demme's concert films are already a magnificent archive, and [this] is one of his best. I'd put it up there with Stop Making Sense, and I realize them's fightin' words. What Demme does that is so unique is show the performer in his natural habitat – onstage – giving us a sense that we are there at the show, but also putting us right up there onstage with him, so that we can see his interactions with the dancers, his musicians, the audience. It's an extremely intimate approach.

The show itself is designed to highlight the unique qualities of each artist, but no one could have captured those idiosyncrasies better than Demme... Dimensions fold into each other to the sound of music, and Timberlake's face as he sings passionately seems to come out of the screen, as if to sing just for us, or just for himself, and in fact for an entire crowd. His intimate experience is also ours.

This infectious concert documentary by Jonathan Demme resoundingly describes Timberlake's appeal in thundering audio-visual terms: boyish charisma, guileless performing pleasure, and a remarkable sharing of his musical credit (so much of it studio-finessed, optimized of appropriation of other music and styles) with a veritable community of producers, musicians, backing vocalists, dancers and more.

The honeycomb proscenium vibrates with renditions of "SexyBack," "What Goes Around" and "Suit & Tie," but Timberlake is rarely alone: art is at its most joyous as an ensemble for Demme, who shapes this vigorous, coruscating record with continuous appreciation of the dancers and players who, often foregrounded in the frame, luxuriate in their own funky arias. I left the theater on such a high that I felt I could have saved on airfare and instead just float back home.

Demme, after all, is the man behind the classic Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense, which remains as striking as ever in the joyousness and sense of community it expresses. Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids is entirely worthy of that gold standard.

To witness Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids, which captures the final performance of Timberlake's 20/20 Experience World Tour at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, is to be in pure bliss... What happens when Jonathan Demme trains his uniquely empathetic eye on a bona-fide megastar? He finds, happily, the potent heart and soul underneath all the rehearsed glitz and glamor.