Official Synopsis
Giving fans unprecedented access to the real life of the music sensation, KATY PERRY: Part of Me exposes the hard work, dedication and phenomenal talent of a girl who remained true to herself and her vision in order to achieve her dreams. Featuring rare behind-the-scenes interviews, personal moments between Katy and her friends, and all-access footage of rehearsals, choreography, Katy’s signature style and more, KATY PERRY: Part of Me reveals the singer’s unwavering belief that if you can be yourself, then you can be anything.
When you start the film all you can really think about is how colorful and fake it all looks. Fake in the sense that the interviews with her friends and co-workers all feel a bit contrived. Then something interesting happens… you get to see Katy Perry on a more personal level. You get to see where she originated from, what struggles she went through to get where she is in her career, what she does for her fans/friends and then what road bumps she ran into (such as the divorce with Russell Brand). All of those things make her a down-to-earth person who no longer looks larger than life. Once she is brought down to that level, everyone else testifying for her character and charm seem to start speaking the truth. At that point, the film really gets rolling.
You get to see her tour get going to the point where Perry is an unprecedented success. Of course, then things start to roll downhill a bit on her. Her exhaustion catches up with her performances, she pushes on with it all. The documentary’s progression doesn’t leave much out of the tour. This film gives a very solid perspective of her career and personal life; good and bad.
The pinnacle of it all, once you start liking who she is as a person, is when she is completely devastated by the news of Russell Brand. Seeing her absolutely crushed will break your heart. What’s remarkable about this moment in the film is that it doesn’t make Russell Brand out to be the bad guy. Perry even talks about how her and Brand simply had different views on having children and making a family. Simply put, she wasn’t ready to have kids and he wanted them. She had the opportunity in the film to be vicious about him, but she was respectful, even though you could tell it killed her.
Anyway, sad things aside, this film is worth checking out, especially if you have Katy Perry fans in the household. It has a great mixture of music and documentary that continually keeps things going. My daughters liked it so much that they ended up watching it two more times. That speaks volumes to how good it was.
As for the Blu-ray portion of this release, wowsers! Paramount did a superb job with bringing this to HD. Perry’s tour really lends some strong visuals to the Blu-ray format. You get lots of colorful onstage moments that translate well to HD. Very solid blues, reds, yellows, greens, blacks, whites and pretty much any color you can think about. The quality of the film doesn’t carry any graininess or color banding, and it’s even throughout. There are no scenes where the HD looks drab or boring; it’s all exciting. I can only imagine how good this looked in 3D, especially the concert scenes. As for the audio side of the Blu-ray release, make sure to adjust your subwoofer. There is quite a lot of bass in this 5.1 mastered DTS-HD track.
Finally, here’s what you should look for in terms of special features:
– Last Friday Night Full Concert Performance
– Waking Up in Vegas Full Concert Performance
– Grandma: “Thinking of You”
– The Grammys You’ll Never Take Away From Me
– California Dreams Tour: Behind the Scenes
For fans of Perry, this is going to be a fun set of special features. Although, I am disappointed about the lack of karaoke. Maybe next time around.