Reviews

Mythical scrolls have been recently unearthed and finally unveiled.  On them a new chapter in the new punk gospel was chiseled, and now, straight from the mouths of men who lived punk before it was punk, comes the definitive look at the New York Dolls.
 
This documentary, culled from over forty hours of B&W film from rock photographer Bob Gruen’s early 70’s collection, will make even the youngest punk rocker long for days of proto-punk gone by.  Days when a young Gene Shalit (huge seventies mustache intact) would devote two full minutes of the evening news in New York City to the New York Dolls - because he was scared of them and what they might represent for the future.  Days before punk was a word, when a loud drunken group of male musical misfits would travel to LA in flamboyant femme fashion. Oh the stares! The vicious, uncomprehending stares dealt out by the respectable men and women who were lucky enough to be mystified by the New York Dolls at JFK, but who would never equate the word ‘luck’ with their airport experience.
 
This documentary is great for the little things it gives you about the Dolls; the quirks and individual manifestations that a slick history would never capture are out in full view here, as the story is told entirely on the spot by the Dolls themselves.  Interviews conducted by Gruen and his partner Nadya Beck in the early days of the Dolls tell even more than they mean to: how big and awesome Johnny Thunders hair was, how funny and charming front man David Johansen was, how smoothly the group meshed together in their early days before drugs and alcohol took their toll.
 
The film includes performances of 12 full songs at such iconic venues as Max’s Kansas City and LA’s Whiskey-A-Go-Go, and a great piece of footage of the Dolls playing their single ‘Trash’ to a packed house in NYC the very day in debuted in stores.  That type of moment is ultimately what makes All Dolled Up such a compelling film: the idea that the camera was in the right place at the right time, that something worth documenting luckily was.  It is the hope of every aspiring documentarian at every show in every town: that what is being photographed, filmed, or otherwise recorded will still matter in thirty years.  The New York Dolls matter is indisputable, and All Dolled Up shows exactly why.