‘Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story’ Overview: Hulu Rock Doc

Right here is an incomplete listing of people that would possibly actually take pleasure in Hulu’s Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story: Longtime Bon Jovi followers, who know this story by coronary heart however find it irresistible sufficient to wish to hear it once more. More moderen converts, desirous to fill within the gaps of their information. People who’re deeply invested in Jon Bon Jovi as an individual, and questioning how he’s been. Jon himself, presumably — although the frontman has harassed that he didn’t have closing reduce, director Gotham Chopra has assembled a portrait as reverent as any celeb would possibly fairly hope for.

Everybody else — the informal listeners, the overall newbies, the gossips and (a minimum of in my case) the critics — can in all probability preserve strolling. Thank You, Goodnight is a wonderfully good retrospective, approachable and amiable and affectionate. However that’s not the identical factor as saying it’s a very insightful one. Whilst Jon topics himself to what should have been dozens or lots of of hours of interviews, he (or maybe Chopra) retains himself at an excessive amount of of a distance to come back totally into focus.

As recommended by the clause in that title, Thank You, Goodnight: The Story of Bon Jovi is technically about Bon Jovi, the band, and never solely Jon Bon Jovi, the person. There’s no query, nevertheless, that within the sequence’ thoughts, Jon is Bon Jovi. The sequence consists of prolonged interviews with different bandmates, together with keyboardist David Bryan, drummer Tico Torres, bassist Hugh McDonald and, most intriguingly, former guitarist Richie Sambora, whose abrupt departure in 2013 nonetheless appears to have Jon in shock. (Bassist Alec John Such was not interviewed earlier than his loss of life in 2022.) However it’s Jon’s perspective that takes precedence, and it tends to be a flattering one. In a lot of his sit-downs, he wears a white shirt in opposition to a backdrop of bluish gentle. Together along with his straightforward attraction and vibrant smile, it casts him in a nigh-angelic glow.

A lot is made by each Jon and his colleagues of his relentless work ethic (“Jon stop faculty ’trigger there was recess,” a good friend jokes), and the four-part, five-hour docuseries follows his perfectionistic lead. Chopra painstakingly compiles previous photographs, interviews, dwelling motion pictures and live performance footage to hint Jon’s journey, from childhood by his four-decade profession as an arena-rock god.

However far much less vitality is spent putting Bon Jovi inside a bigger cultural context. It’s a disgrace, since a few of the present’s most evocative bits are the temporary sketches we get of the working-class New Jersey scene that gave rise to Bruce Springsteen earlier than Bon Jovi, or of the “black t-shirt crowd” who would convey their disapproval of the band’s not-quite-metal sound by pelting them with cash. Even Jon’s supposedly electrical stage presence is extra talked about than proven. Perhaps you simply needed to be there.

Woven all through this dutiful historical past are scenes of Jon in newer years, as Chopra follows the singer by his 2022 tour, subsequent vocal surgical procedure and grueling restoration course of. Jon isn’t totally averse to letting his vulnerabilities present. When Chopra asks at what level he realized Sambora wasn’t coming again, he ruefully replies that he nonetheless hasn’t. Backstage on the 2022 reveals, he swings between the giddiness of attending to carry out reside, the frustration that his voice isn’t what it was once, the harm on the unfavorable critiques he’s getting consequently. Months after the surgical procedure, he winces to listen to himself sing in non-public — he nonetheless doesn’t sound like himself, and he is aware of it, and the Charlie Brown-esque hunch of his shoulders suggests he’s completely heartbroken about it. For a second, it appears like we’re watching the guard come down utterly.

Principally, although, Thank You, Goodnight is content material to easily sit again and admire Jon. Whereas it sometimes, halfheartedly guarantees a warts-and-all portrayal — “Are we telling the reality or are we gonna lie, what are we gonna do?” Sambora asks in his first look, which is positioned nearly like a cliffhanger on the finish of episode one — the sequence is extra respectful than uncooked. Notably missing are the kind of candid, particular particulars which may foster true intimacy. As a lot as Jon prides himself on his iconic lyrics, he evidently prefers to talk about his personal historical past in PR-friendly platitudes. The decadent ’80s? “With out freely giving too many secrets and techniques, something that any a type of bands talked about, we did it too, and it was enjoyable. It was actual enjoyable.” The teachings he discovered from his temporary early stint with one other band? “Don’t not be a visionary.”  

A favourite trick of the sequence’ is to take a look at arduous or messy issues solely from the rearview. Reflecting on the band’s induction in to the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame in 2018, Jon admits that he’d been “upset we weren’t in there earlier.” However that’s the primary we’re listening to that Jon had been hoping for the honour in any respect; his favourite line up till that time has been to insist that they have been by no means doing what they did for the critics or the prizes or the cash. His humility at lastly getting the prize definitely makes for a prettier image than his frustration at not getting it might have, and Jon and his bandmates don’t owe it to us to dish up previous dust or expose their most non-public emotions. However such reticence sits at odds along with his assertions that the documentary is about displaying “the actual me.”

If something, the closest we get to the “actual” Jon could be what exists in elisions like these. You possibly can search for him within the unfavorable house between the man who humbly insists he’s “simply the ringleader” of the Bon Jovi operation and the man whose management philosophy is “simply belief me, and I’ll take us the place we have to go.” And within the hole between his insistence that he might make peace with the tip of his profession if he needed to and the strain he places on himself to not simply preserve going however get again on prime.

Perhaps Jon actually is as modest and grateful and serene as he presents himself to be; for certain he’s somebody who believes he’s, and needs you to imagine he’s too. These tensions don’t make him look dangerous, a lot as merely human. However Thank You, Goodnight is right here to rejoice an icon, to not reveal a person.