Review of Foo Fighters: Back and Forth (2011) by Mike M — 09 Jun 2011

Moll tells this story chronologically and somewhat conventionally, although interviewing band members separately allows for revealing shifts in perspective, and the archive festival footage demonstrates both the group's live appeal, and how touched Grohl (doing little here to damage his nicest-man-in-rock sobriquet) remains by all the adulation.

.. There's little of the heavy psychic agonising that beset Metallica in "Some Kind of Monster": the testimony reveals a history of brisk clear-the-air talks, and an ongoing commitment to getting on with things.

This was a band that reached its lowest point before it had even come into being (with Kurt Cobain's death), which explains the celebratory air, and why the chronological approach is so effective, reminding us how far the Foo Fighters have come.

In as far as any rock band can be said to have evolved, this surely was it: a group refusing to brood or sulk or dwell (as Kurt surely did) whenever things got bad or, conversely, went too well; the film ends as it began, with a shattering loud bang - not gunshots this time, but fireworks exploding over the band's biggest gig to date at Wembley Stadium.

This is "Back and Forth"'s true climax; an epilogue depicting the recording of the Foos' most recent album at Grohl's family home, is sweet, but also the point at which the film tips over to become a promotional tool.

Everything we see here was phrased more dynamically in the rock-out refrain of the band's colossal hit "All My Life": "Done, and done/And I'm onto the next one". They're still working, and touring, and living; if Kurt is looking down on them, he surely does so with a smile and a slight sense of regret.