'One Direction: This Is Us': Movie Review

Morgan Spurlock documentary plays a little like a promo for the boy band, but it does convey the group's exhaustion and isolation

The most telling quotes in the new One Direction documentary “This Is Us” don’t come from any member of the band.

They come from their parents, who, at various times, carp about their kids’ trajectory from the moment they were put together on “The X Factor” back in 2010.

“Two days later, he was gone,” says one parent.

“I haven’t seen him in months,” says another.

It sounds less like they’re talking about teen idols than about kidnap victims.

Lurking in Morgan Spurlock’s otherwise boostery documentary is a sense of isolation and exhaustion surrounding its dewy subjects. The director heightens the effect by featuring many shots of the guys flat on their backs — asleep in hallways, venues, and buses, often stripped to the waist.

Naturally, that last feature doubles as a lure for the film’s target audience: young girls, eager to road-test their budding sexuality. But it also lends a hint of honesty, and even empathy, to a film that, otherwise, often plays like just a promo job for the pop stars of the hour. Many quotes run along the lines of “We have the best fans in the world.” Or “We’re the world’s luckiest guys.”

No kidding.

The guys’ warm-milk comments surprise only because they contradict One Direction’s oft-stated desire to present themselves as slightly saltier than the average teen girl-magnets. In their t weets and on Instagram they show themselves drinking or pulling each others’ pants down. Here, there’s no alcohol, no smoking and nothing close to sex.

Spurlock’s film does a good job of establishing just how the five managed to find themselves in the right place, at a very right time. The early part of “This Is Us” focuses on their introduction as failed, individual singers on the smash British show “The X Factor.” Mastermind Simon Cowell explains his "eureka" moment when he decided to cast the five as a single “boy band,” unified in “One Direction.”

Their route to stardom proves stunningly swift, and surprisingly global — a fact presented here as if it all came down to the magical qualities of the members themselves. In fact, it had more to do with new social media, which allowed the group to jump borders and circumvent mainstream media with an ease no earlier communication system allowed.