The Rolling Stones have been an institution since their Steel Wheels tour back in 1989. They've been rock gods longer, but beginning with that tour, Mick, Keef and the boys transformed from a band whose every album had to be heard (in truth, the last album that had to be heard was Tattoo You eight years earlier) into a band you'd pay to see every three years when their traveling caravan of old musicians in tacky clothing put up their tent anywhere within a 200 mile radius of your house.

In short, despite a few good songs here and there in the past two decades, the Stones became less a band than an event. That they can still rock with the best of 'em there's no question, but if you've seen them once since Steel Wheels...you've pretty much seen what you're gonna see.

So Martin Scorsese had a real opportunity to give us something special with Shine a Light, the first Stones documentary in over a quarter century. He could have gone behind the curtain, on the plane, in the studio. Instead, it's just a concert movie.

There are plenty of problems with this soundtrack-on-a-screen, and while I don't feel it's fair to harp on my main criticism of showing us something other than a concert - you can't really hand out demerits for something a director didn't even try to do - I will list a few others.

1) Why film a Rolling Stones concert in a smaller, more intimate venue? These guys are arena rockers through-and-through, and even though it was probably terrific seeing the band that close up if you were in the crowd, it lacks the magnitude necessary for the trouble if we're watching a document of it. The Stones are the biggest band in the world, but they sure don't seem like it here.

2) A rule for future rockumentarians: Special guests ruin concert movies. Nothing against Jack White or Christina Aguilera, but these tributes are always self-serving and the performances always have an unapproachable quality.

3) Even though Martin Scorsese made The Last Waltz, which is the Bible of this kind of filmmaking, he does himself no favors here, in terms of both on screen appearances and perhaps a mishandled sense of what the project is all about. The Stones performed for one of Bill Clinton's charities, so the former President takes the stage for a bit, there's a weird meet-and-greet with some of Clinton's guests, and again, with the guest performances it's almost like a tribute to the power of the Stones, the idea of the band, rather than a great behind the scenes look at their day-to-day lives on tour or even a straight concert film.

Having said all that, there are still some great touches, whether it's some unusual camera work or a brief bit of newsreel footage about the band dating back 40 years, making the movie watchable while never approaching successful.

If you've not seen The Rolling Stones in concert or if you haven't seen many concert films, you might walk away from Shine a Light more enthusiastically than I did. But let's stop for a moment and tally the components: The Rolling Stones, Martin Scorsese. This should have been much, much better.

Shine a Light

Featuring The Rolling Stones

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Rated PG-13

Review by Colin Boyd

April 4, 2008