FilmSnobReviews

Title: Songs About Fucking
MPA Rating: Not Rated
Director: James Gallagher
Starring: Mark Rebillet
Runtime: 1 hour 39 mins

What it is:  Sons About F-ing is a music documentary about Mark Rebillet, YouTube sensation and renowned improv musician. We follow him and his crew as he goes on tour throughout the US and witness the highs and lows of his journey.  We see performances, get some insight into Mark Rebillet’s childhood, and ultimately wind up with a very intimate look into the very quirky and unique artist.

What We Think:  When I first heard about Mark Rebillet a couple of years ago, or rather saw a video of his, I didn’t know what to think. Some friends of mine pulled up a random clip and showed me a song they loved to reference. Here was a guy in a robe, an awesome mustache, and thick horn rimmed glasses looping a beat he made on the spot and singing wild lyrics over it. It was unique and peculiar and I hadn’t quite ever seen anything like it. Not too long after, I began seeing him more and more until eventually I became fairly familiar with seeing his face. While not necessarily a fan, I was very delighted to see that I was assigned to look at this documentary about him. The documentary inter-cuts footage from his youth and basically the start to end of his extensive US Tour. In this documentary, you learn small bits about his childhood through both his footage and some interviews. Other than that, a good chunk of the footage is performing shows, traveling, or hanging out backstage with his personal crew. Considering that the majority of his shows entail musical improv, it was extremely entertaining to see the wild things Mark gets up to in his shows. The story of the tour, start to end within itself, was interesting. It seems like a tour that had very extreme highs, and unfortunately towards the end had a pretty serious low that Mark was luckily able to recover from. The camera work and some of the segments are extremely intimate, really making you feel that you are on the tour bus with the crew. Some of the antics of the crew definitely made me chuckle and everyone involved, Mark included, seemed like they would be awesome people to be around overall. For the most part I really enjoyed this documentary.

If I had any negatives to say on this documentary, I would say some segments felt like they ran a little longer than they needed to and I didn’t feel like there was enough commentary throughout. In a strange way, I feel like I didn’t get to know Mark Rebillet as well as other music documentaries I have seen and reviewed in the past. While he did go rather into detail on some intimate aspects of his life, I felt in this documentary I was more getting to see him and his crew doing their thing rather than getting to know any of them. I can understand if privacy was a concern, but I felt like overall more talking about how his crew knew Mark, Mark’s creative process, or even a little more into his background would’ve been a nice touch. Maybe there is Youtube content already out there that addresses all that, but for someone that doesn’t follow Mark Rebillet, it would’ve been a nice addition if only to better understand the artist the documentary is about.

Our Grade: B+, Overall this documentary is very enjoyable, I just wish that it gave me more information. Ultimately it is extremely fun to see the things Mark and friends get up to on tour. They seem like a very likable group of people, and I had fun hanging out with them through what seems like a hell of a journey. I just wish I got to know them all a little better. Loved the music overall, though.