Jagged

I'm not sure what these other reviewers were smoking, but Jagged was great. There. I said it.

I was 18 when I first heard Alanis play on the radio, in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. I'm 45 now.

This nostalgic trip back to when music was music, when artist still experimented, when life was care free, Apartheid had just ended, and we were all brimming with hope for a future - made me reminisce on how great it was to be alive.

Artists were artists - today, we have studio groomed performers singing unfeeling songs created from dead templates that corporations mass feed to the public.

Everyone is encouraged to be unique as long as everyone is the same.

If there was no Alanis, there wouldn't be an Adele, a Joan Osborne, a Tracy Bonham, etc. She revolutionised the male dominated industry by giving it a massive middle finger.

I remember how she popped out of nowhere. I recall the rumours - from her being a former adult movie actress to men that wrote the songs for her.

This vid corrects everything and sets the past straight.

Her voice was unique, her stage presence persona was unfake, her music is timeless and her personality real... and if you didn't like it, then go listen to Jim Reeves, you pretentious tonsil. Every major female artist today have traits copied from the original.

The previous generation was one of strength.

Gen X was one without fear - like Alanis.

And this show reminds you of that.

As "Jagged" (2021 release; 97 min.) opens, Alanis and her band are in their dressing room, moments before going onstage at another gig on the "Jagged Little Pill" tour. We then go to Alanis today, as she gets situated for being interviewed by the director, and Alanis starts talking about her upbringing in Ontario, Canada and how she became a Debbie Gibson-reminding pop star at age 15, only to abandon it all and restart in Los Angeles at age 19...

Couple of comments: this is the latest from up-and-coming but already well respected documentary director Alison Klayman ("The Brink"). Here she looks back at how Alanis reinvented herself from scratch for the "Jagged Little Pill" album. Alanis talks openly about being raped at age 15 in Canada (it's called "statutory rape", she says). Her musical partnership with producer Glen Ballard gets plenty of coverage. The film includes many other talking heads, such as Shirly Manson (Garbage), Taylor Hawkins (Foo Fighters, but he was the drummer on the Jagged tour) and others. There is plenty of concert footage of course. It's hard to believe that it's been 25 years ago. I all found it quite rollicking as a documentary. Alanis, who gave full cooperation during the filming, has now openly disavowed the film for being "reductive" and "salacious". Say what? Did Alanis and I watch the same documentary? I'm thinking this is just Alanis being Alanis.

"Jagged" opened this weekend on HBO as part of the "Music Box" documentary series. It is now available on HBO On Demand and on HBO Max (where I saw it), and eventually on other streaming platforms and DVD/Blu-ray. If you loved "Jagged Little Pill" and all that it stood for (and who doesn't?), I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

Fascinating look at her origins, the issues she dealt with as a female artist in a male dominated commercial industry and her thoughts regarding it. Her music still stands up and I can't wait for her to get her due properly.

For all the controversy about Alanis being unhappy with the film and finding it "salacious," it's actually pretty dull. After the Woodstock '99 documentary, which was informative, entertaining, and did a great job contextualizing the events depicted, I had much higher hopes for this. Unfortunately, it's less of a documentary and more of a retrospective without a whole lot to say. The music is still great, though.

Isn't it ironic? This documentary only very superficially delved into Alanis Morissette, the person, but it was apparently "too salacious" for Alanis. I would like to have learned more about what makes Alanis the person who was able to create such wonderful music.

I had just finished watching the Anthony Bourdain documentary, Roadrunner. We got real insight into Anthony the person in that film, to learn about his beauty and his flaws, not about how great his TV shows were.

With Jagged, we got a film whose thesis is "Alanis set the world on fire with Jagged Little Pill and opened the door for women in rock." An inspiring message about someone who started on the wrong track (a Tiffany and Debbie Gibson wannabe) but was determined to find her own voice rather than what sleazy showbiz promoters of the moment needed her to be. There are similarly inspiring feminist messages throughout, but to some to some extent this film comes across like one of those DVD "extra" promo reels.

It just seemed to lack substance and purpose.