Well-deserved and long-overdue tribute to the anonymous studio musicians, known collectively as the Funk Brothers, who shaped the Motown Sound in the 1960s. The visual material is a little thin: minimal archive footage (these men by definition were out of the limelight), bogus "re-enactments," and a sentimental but largely meaningless reunion concert of the surviving Brothers and "cover" vocalists such as Joan Osborne, Meshell Mdegeocello, Bootsy Collins, Ben Harper, Chaka Khan. So many of the key players were already dead when the film was shot -- and another of them, keyboardist Johnny Griffith, would die within a week of its release -- but it's a pleasure and a privilege to listen in on the reminiscences of the rest. Directed by Paul Justman. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd
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