Liam Neeson introduces and narrates a look back over the life of Clark Gable both the "tall, dark, handsome" man and the private life where he had a daughter he never publicly acknowledged, a lover with a tragic fate and a son he never lived to see. This film uses a lot of clips to build this picture and in that is its weakness it has far too many clips and far too little insight or contributions to really stand out as an effective documentary or character study.
It gets better in the second half of the film but in the first half it might as well be a clips show called "That's Clark Gable!" for all that you get out of it. In the second half it does give you more but even then it is pretty factual stuff rather than loads of personal insight; there are a few talking heads but none of them really related anything that stayed with me or provided more than what is already common knowledge. Neeson plods through an overly sincere and slightly gushing narration and looks like a man just trying to earn a crust with a few days graft! Overall this is not a great documentary. I wasn't that knowledgeable about Gable before this film so I did get something from the second half of this but I doubt that the "just the facts ma'am" approach will do much for his fans. It does have some value of course, but sadly this is 30% value to the audience and 70% value to the network as easy filler.
It gets better in the second half of the film but in the first half it might as well be a clips show called "That's Clark Gable!" for all that you get out of it. In the second half it does give you more but even then it is pretty factual stuff rather than loads of personal insight; there are a few talking heads but none of them really related anything that stayed with me or provided more than what is already common knowledge. Neeson plods through an overly sincere and slightly gushing narration and looks like a man just trying to earn a crust with a few days graft! Overall this is not a great documentary. I wasn't that knowledgeable about Gable before this film so I did get something from the second half of this but I doubt that the "just the facts ma'am" approach will do much for his fans. It does have some value of course, but sadly this is 30% value to the audience and 70% value to the network as easy filler.