JOE JAY JALBERT, R. DOUGLAS COPSEY

One Light, One World

I have absolutely no idea what these producers were thinking when they made this. Why use Marker Felt for the titles? Why get legendary movie trailer voiceover talent Don LaFontaine to be the narrator? Why spend a whole section in the middle talking about faith and religion? Why pace whole sections like it’s an MTV music video, with the audio to match?

What’s amazing, is it almost works. It’s so wacky and so weird, but there’s definitely something there. Ultimately, it’s just not enough, and the whole thing ends up being boring. Which is, in and of itself, almost an accomplishment given everything I just told you.

There are some definite things to like about this film though. They follow the Bud Greenspan model, sure, but luckily they provide a lot more context. They also show enough non-athlete things to provide at least some balance. They seem to remember this is firstly a world spectacle, attached to an athletic competition.

I still don’t love the style, even with the broadened scope. It takes away some of the wonder and majesty of the games. At least in this film it’s not quite as intense, or as fully given into.

They do one thing I can’t believe hasn’t happened before. They use the sound from the live television announcers as the narration for some of the events. It works brilliantly. It really captures the intensity of the moment, and makes it feel like a sporting event that’s happening now. Maybe that’s why the Greenspanisms didn’t bother me as much.

This is less than the sum of its very weird parts, but I still like that they tried something different. - Dec 27th, 2019