21/06/2023 - Chris Smith’s doc is an aesthetically unremarkable account of one of the 1980s’ most popular musical duos, but also an entertaining piece exploring the effects of overly rapid success

The subject of Chris Smith’s new documentary, Wham!, which was world-premiered in the Rhythms strand of this year’s Sheffield DocFest, needs little introduction. The picture covers the whole story of the popular titular English band, beginning with the first encounter between Andrew Ridgeley and Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou (who would later go by the stage name of George Michael) at Bushey Meads School and continuing up until their split in 1986. The film zooms in on the genesis of their biggest hits – the likes of “Club Tropicana”, “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”, “Freedom” and “Last Christmas” – but also explores the two artists’ contrasting, turbulent personalities and lifestyles in adequate depth.

Smith manages to narrate how Ridgeley was somehow the leading personality and the most hot-headed guy, but also the one who chose to go for a more easy-going approach with his musical work, almost living from day to day and enjoying the moment. Meanwhile, Michael was a more introverted and insecure kind of person, but also a much more ambitious boy, constantly looking for affirmation. The discovery of his homosexuality and his coming out are also tackled with the right dose of tact and sensitivity.

What emerges beautifully is the band’s reflection on the speed of their success. In less than five years, and after their first two commercial failures, Ridgeley and Michael transformed themselves from simple school friends into international superstars who were on top of the world, and who had everything they could ever wish for. Their rise to fame probably happened too fast, and the pair’s diverging artistic paths began to emerge with Michael’s ambitions to write more sophisticated, adult-orientated songs, like his evergreen ballad “Careless Whisper”.

While criss-crossing the United States on their successful 1985 US-Canadian tour, they both wonder: “Where do we go from here?” Here, their split is narrated as “waking up from a dream”, a simple metaphor that best summarises many of the shared artistic experiences of this kind.

Aesthetically speaking, Smith’s documentary is totally in line with the TV-like format sported by other similar pieces of non-fiction. In detail, it is based on an extensive amount of archive footage and interview recordings (some of the excerpts are rare or have never been seen before), while adopting an extremely linear structure that makes for very easy viewing and touching upon the performers’ inner conflicts. The only two aspects that really stand out are the sequence revolving around the band’s Chinese tour in April 1985 – an interesting part of their story, which was also documented by Lindsay Anderson’s Wham! in China: Foreign Skies, released just one year later – and the nifty idea of connecting the different narrative blocks by reimagining the numerous scrapbooks created by George Michael’s mother, which collated every single step of the duo’s career.

That being said, Wham! is certainly an unmissable doc for all lovers of the band and of 1980s pop music in general.

Wham! is a UK production staged by Simon Halfon for Netflix. The picture will be released theatrically for one night only, on 27 June, and is set to premiere globally on Netflix on 5 July.