Review: 'The Sparks Brothers' showcases the pioneering pop band over 50 years of clips and interviews with some famous fans

It’s possible that no brothers have been so musically talented and consistently cool for 50-plus years, without the mainstream success that usually comes with such longevity, as Ron and Russell Mael, the duo that make up the band Sparks.

The Maels sit down for the definitive career-spanning documentary in “The Sparks Brothers,” in which director Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead,” “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”) makes a strong case for why Sparks is the band that other musicians always talk about.

Growing up in the Los Angeles area — and not the UK, which many people assume — the Maels grew up on early rock ’n’ roll, from Bill Haley and the Comets on to Elvis, Little Richard and James Brown. They also grew up on Saturday matinees, cartoons and newsreels, back when you came in during the middle of the movie and stayed until it looped around again. Ron Mael says this may explain their jagged narrative style.

After their father died when Ron was 11 and Russ was 8, the brothers relied on each other to guard against the cruel world. Ron took piano lessons, and Russ became a jock — and they both thrived on the pop music of Los Angeles AM radio of the ‘60s. Mom even drove them to Vegas in their teens to see The Beatles.

After forming a few bands in college, they started Sparks in 1967, with Russell as the handsome frontman (he modeled himself after Mick Jagger and Roger Daltrey, maybe with Marc Bolan of T. Rex thrown in) and Ron as the mad scientist at the keyboard. Most record-company scouts didn’t get what Sparks was doing, but the band’s manager got a demo tape to rocker Todd Rundgren, who urged his label to sign them immediately. Rundgren talks about his love of the band, and bears no grudge that his girlfriend at the time went on to date Russell Mael.

For a time, Ron sported a mustache that was somewhere between Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler. Wright shows, through animation, a possibly apocryphal moment when Sparks appeared on the BBC’s “Top of the Pops,” and John Lennon rang up Ringo Starr and said, “There’s Marc Bolan playing with Hitler.” (Wright enlisted his mates, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, to perform the voices of John and Ringo.)

Wright devotes time to nearly all of Sparks’ 25 albums over the last half-century, so there are moments when the audience feels it’s being held captive by an overly obsessive Sparks completist — which we are, kind of. But Wright has lots of company, based on the many interviews with famous musicians who note the debt to owe to Sparks. Vince Clarke of Erasure jokes that he, Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran (who’s in the movie) and Chris Lowe of Pet Shop boys all copy Ron Mael’s morose stance behind the keyboards. Meanwhile, The Go-Go’s Jane Wiedlin (who dueted with Russell Mael on Sparks’ 1983 hit “Cool Places”) and Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand (who formed a supergroup with Sparks, called FFS, in 2015) both marvel at the fun of collaborating with their favorite band.

There’s plenty of footage of Sparks in performance; they appeared often on “American Bandstand” and many similar shows in Europe — and they went through an MTV phase, as everyone did in the ‘80s.

Wright’s thesis is that Sparks was ahead of every pop trend from the ‘70s through the ‘90s — from synthesizers to dance moves later appropriated by Molly Ringwald — but never stayed in one lane long enough to reap the financial rewards of their pioneering music. But when you see Ron and Russell Mael now, still making music their own way in their 70s, it’s hard to say they weren’t successful. 

——

‘The Sparks Brothers’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, June 18, at Century 16 (South Salt Lake), Cinemark 24 Jordan Landing (West Valley City), Megaplex at The District (South Jordan), Megaplex Thanksgiving Point (Lehi), and Cinemark 16 (Provo). Rated R for language. Running time: 140 minutes.