Moog (2004)

A lot of fun.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I was captivated by Moog synthesizers at age 12, when "Switched On Bach" was released. I've read many things by and about Bob Moog over the years, and was looking forward to seeing this documentary. But sadly, it's a missed opportunity. First of all, the video quality looks like an 8mm home movie from the 1970s, rather than a 2004 production. Secondly, it's very amateurishly done. For instance, when you have Bernie Worrell, Rick Wakeman, and Moog together to talk about synths, do you think you could possibly pull them into a quiet room, instead of holding a 10-minute interview in a busy hallway with so much background noise that the voices are hardly audible? There are interesting bits here, including archive footage of the Moog assembly line and Gershon "Popcorn" Kingsley with his Moog Quartet. But there's a lot of BAD synth music too, and poor visuals. If you're a die-hard Moog fan like myself, you'll put up with it. If you're not, skip it.

Although I'm not a massive fan of electronic music but I have sufficient interest in the genre to check out this documentary on the inventor of the electronic synthesizer, Robert Moog. Watching this film was probably not the best way to try and find out more about the man, the instrument and its impact. As many others on this internet site have already pointed out, director Hans Fjellestad does a really average job of doing anything in this film.The one thing he does appear to be good at selling himself to potential subjects because the film does have a reasonably good array of people on hand to discuss what they do with it and particularly Fjellestad has Moog pretty much on tap throughout the film. It looks like the plan has been to point the camera at whoever is talking, film it and work out the detail in the edit. Sometimes that works and of course with reality shows and the like that is pretty much all you can do but in the vast majority of cases it is a recipe for disaster. So it is here in a film that lacks structure to the point that if Moog wants to ramble endlessly while pottering round his garden then that makes the cut but hardly anytime can be found for many artists that one would associate with the synthesizer. OK, maybe rights to the music or access to the artists was an issue due to the low budget but this is not much of an excuse.Astonishingly the film is barely over an hour long and it is testament to how poor it is that it feels like it never ends. God help us if we ever see an extended cut of this because imagine the footage that they didn't feel worthy of making it into this version! Anyway, I stuck with it but ultimately there is almost nothing of value here; my mind was open to learning more about the impact this instrument had had but it falls down in this regard with a lack of structure and aim that must be laid right at the doors of the director and producers. A totally missed opportunity.

Others have said it in other comments and I have to agree with them. Moog was an extremely important man in the world of electronic music and he really deserved a better tribute than this rambling mess of clips. The film maker never gets to grips with the guy in any way, shape or form but what I find more frustrating than anything is his choice of music to represent the moments in history. Perhaps he was on such a low budget that he couldn't afford certain rights but when Bob Moog talks about 'Switched on Bach' as being a ground breaking album, changing the public perception of what electronic music could offer, there isn't one single note from the album played. There's not even the mention of the composer's name. How can you have a documentary about Moog and not even mention the name Walter Carlos ? Quite unbelievable. The 'Switched on Bach' moment is quickly passed over for some reason and rushes into a short Keith Emerson clip. I also seem to remember that Tangerine Dream are never mentioned or any of their music played. All in all there are so many holes in the production it limits both its appeal and historic interest. Shame really because it queers the pitch for someone else who may want to do the job properly.

I enjoyed watching this homage to the synthesizer inventor and all round nice guy Bob Moog but spent hours afterward discussing ways this documentary could have been better. That's not to say there's all that much wrong with it except that it suffers from a genuine lack of archive footage. Bob was building his Synths from the early 60s, before that he was making Theremins. There's no footage of any of this. 'Why not use stills and rostrum?' was my immediate thought.It was great to hear Moog Synths being played well. Rick Wakemen (who provides the film's one big laugh) made them sound good. In fact, just to hear people messing about on them was interesting. I wanted more of this and perhaps some insights into how they were used in the studio (the film concentrates mainly on live performance).Perhaps just a bit too much time was spent allowing Bob to share his rather vague (and, sorry to say this, slightly boring) view of the universe. Not that the Doc as a whole is boring, it is not. It is very watchable and only 70 minutes long. Though I wanted something more from it, it did do what it set out to do without sagging.