Film Review: "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" (2020).

"From the award-winning producers of The Beatles: Eight Days a Week and Sinatra: All or Nothing" comes The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart. This documentary directed by Frank Marshall and written by Mark Monroe. The film chronicles the triumphs and hurdles of brothers Barry, Maurice, and Robin Gibb, otherwise known as the Bee Gees. The iconic trio, who found early fame in the 1960s, went on to write over one-thousand songs and have twenty No. 1 hits throughout their career, transcending more than five decades of changing tastes and styles. The film is an intimate exploration of the Gibb story, featuring revealing interviews with oldest brother Barry and archival interviews with the late twin brothers Robin and Maurice.

In 1955, Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb formed the Rattlesnakes, which would go on to become The Bee Gees, and began their especially successful career as a popular music act in the late 1960s and later became prominent performers of the disco music era in the mid-to-late 1970s. The group sang recognisable three-part tight harmonies; Robin's clear vibrato lead vocals were a hallmark of their earlier hits, while Barry's R&B falsetto became their signature sound during the mid-to-late 1970s and 1980s. They wrote all of their own hits, as well as writing and producing several major hits for other artists. Born on the Isle of Man to English parents, the Gibb brothers lived in Chorlton, Manchester, England until the late 1950s. There, in 1955, they formed the skiffle/rock and roll group the Rattlesnakes. The family then moved to Redcliffe, in the Moreton Bay Region, Queensland, Australia, and then to Cribb Island. After achieving their first chart success in Australia as the Bee Gees with "Spicks and Specks" (their 12th single), they returned to the UK in January 1967, when producer Robert Stigwood began promoting them to a worldwide audience. The soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever (1977) was the turning point of their career, with both the film and soundtrack having a cultural impact throughout the world, enhancing the disco scene's mainstream appeal. They won five Grammy Awards for the soundtrack, including Album of the Year. They have sold over a hundred and twenty million records worldwide (with estimates as high as over two hundred and twenty million), making them among the best-selling music artists of all time. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. They are the third most successful band in Billboard charts history after the Beatles and the Supremes. Following Maurice's sudden death in January 2003 at the age of fifty-three, Barry and Robin retired the group's name after forty-five years of activity. However, in 2009, Robin announced that he and Barry had agreed that they would re-form and perform again. However, Robin died in May 2012, aged sixty-two, after a prolonged period of failing health, leaving Barry as the only surviving member of the group.

The film presents the ups and downs of titular band whose harmony in song masked a fractured collective off the stage.

Simon says The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart receives: