Milli Vanilli

In the beginning of August in 1988 i was at a disco party with a school friend of mine called Anna Kajsa. She had the longest blond hair i have ever seen before and you would notice her easily on the dance floor. She had fixed this disco party in her parents garage since it was so big, it was pretty much like a combination of a garage and a basement combined. So she invited the whole class to this disco party to celebrate her birthday and the idea was she wanted everyone to dance that night. She was playing mixed cassette tapes that she have recorded. I remember hearing songs from Michael Jackson, Rick Astley, Tears For Fears, George Michael´s song Faith, Taylor Dayne song Tell It To My Heart and so many more pop song. It was easy to understand that Anna Kajsa was a big 80´s pop fan through her mixed cassette tapes. I remember that evening especially one song because Anna Kajsa and two other girls named Annika and Helena went insane when the Milli Vanilli song Girl You Know It´s True came on her cassette stereo. They danced like crazy and dragged me and two other guys to dance, so i did. I was terrible trying to do some kind of Milli Vanilli dance but i tried at least, you know to try and impess one of the girls. The song Girl You Know It´s True i had only seen on MTV like a couple of weeks before this birthday party was, but i was never really a Milli Vanilli fan. During this time in the 80´s i listened a lot to British rock band Queen, Irish rock band U2, Faith No More and many other bands so i had a completely different music taste. It was difficult not to notice how big Milli Vanilli came especially with the upcoming singles and the release of their debut album All Or Nothing. They were huge all over the world until one day in July of 1989 when everything crashed down during a live performance, and it turned out that Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus didn´t actually sing they were just doing lip syncing. It didn´t end there but by the end of 1990 the truth had come out and Milli Vanilli´s fame was gone as well as their music career. So here we are with a documentary film released last year hearing different people telling us how it all started who worked with this band, including Milli Vanilli member Fab Morvan being interviewed as well telling his side of the story. So the question is, does this documentary tell a story about Milli Vanilli in an interesting way or is it too basic and will most likely be forgotten about?

2 young men called Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus met a dance seminar at a club in Munich, Germany. They were talented dancers and clearly had a great chemistry and became close friends. Life was rough and they tried to make money to survive, until one day when German music producer Frank Farian noticed them and invited them both to his studio in Frankfurt. Being in need of money and knowing that this might be their big chance, since Frank was working as the producer of disco pop sensation Boney M in the 70´s. Fab and Rob are offered a contract to be in a new music project called Milli Vanilli. There is just one problem, none of them are allowed to sing so Frank will fix others singers instead. All Fab and Rob has to do is mime and dance on stage. For a while it works really good, Milli Vanilli becomes a pop sensation worldwide until one day the truth comes out.....

I personally did not know much about the whole story of Milli Vanilli and how it all started, so for me going into a documentary film such as this means there are some details i knew nothing about. For example i did not know that both Fab and Rob came from very difficult childhoods where especially Fab was a victim of child abuse. Being abused as a child will affect your life in many ways, so the fact that he managed to turn his life around together with Rob who also felt lost is a very inspiring story how they managed to find each other through dancing. I also had no idea that Fab was homeless when he was 18 years old in Paris, and to be able to go through that and become a pop star worldwide is an amazing story. It becomes very clear that the man who created Milli Vanilli known as music producer Frank Farian, only wanted to make money of their looks and dancing talent. He didn´t really care about Fab or Rob even though he knew he created a pop duo who could not sing in English and choosed to fake it instead. Money talks as they say and if you can create something successfull that people love, doesn´t matter if it´s real or not as long as you get paid a lot of money. There is a very fascinating story surrounding this pop duo and how they managed to become so successfull, and this documentary film does a good job explaining how they made this possible before they were revealed. The most interesting part is actually after they are revealed how both of these men struggled to find their way in life. The drug addiction that especially Rob Pilatus struggled with ended with him dead in a hotel room in 1998, and how do you go on after that being such close friends as Fab was to Rob after so many years? Fab Morvan tells us very openly how difficult this was. Milli Vanilli is a well made documentary film that shows that anyone can make a dream come true if you really are talented, but success comes with a price as well. Director Luke Korem manage to tell this story both from the people who knew Fab and Rob personally but also who worked with them to create Milli Vanilli. Even if you may not be a fan of Milli Vanilli, i think this documentary film shows that Milli Vanilli´s music will live on as long as people remember the good times this pop duo delivered to their audiences worldwide. The fact that Fab still tours to honor his dear friend and fans worldwide is of course wonderful. Who knows, even you might be doing a dance once you hear Girl You Know It´s True after watching this great documentary film.

Rating: DDD