BACKSTREET BOYS: SHOW’EM WHAT YOU’RE MADE OF

Review: LAW

“Backstreet Boys: Show ‘Em What You’re Made Of” is a documentary made by Stephen Kijak, spanning the 2 years the band spent making their 2013 album “In a World Like This” to celebrate their 20th anniversary and the subsequent world tour to support the album.

The group now consists of all the original members: A.J. McLean, Howie Dorough, Nick Carter, Kevin Richardson and Brian Littrell. Kevin Richardson had left in 2006 and returned in 2011, citing “pursuing other interests” as the reason for his departure.

The documentary follows the members as they tell the story of their lives before the band, returning to their hometowns and schools to visit the teachers that had a lasting impact on their lives. Old wounds are opened during this time as Kevin Richardson returns to the holiday camp he was brought up on that his father managed, to tell the story of his father’s death. Nick Carter describes his dysfunctional family, explored more thoroughly perhaps in his short-lived reality series, House of Carters. The reality of becoming the main breadwinner for a family from the age of 14 has weighed heavily on his shoulders. Howie Dorough describes coming to terms with not being the main focus in the group, after a lucrative career as a child star before entering the band, and negotiation with the rest of the band for a bigger part of the vocals on their new album. Much has been publicised about A.J. McLean’s drug issues and this is not explored in much detail during the documentary.

However tensions do run high over Brian Littrell’s medical condition effecting his voice, vocal chord dysphonia. During a meeting with the record company executives things get very heated between Nick and Brian over his condition and treatment of as it is in doubt whether Brian will be able to perform consistently on the tour.

There is a very interesting story within the Backstreet Boys story, the story of the manager Lou Pearlman, a nefarious figure who created both Backstreet Boys and NSYNC. Lou Pearlman might be familiar to anyone who watched the original MTV Making the Band, where Pearlman put together Otown, presumably trying to make some money considering all his other bands were suing him. In 1997, Littrell brought a lawsuit against Lou Pearlman and Trans Continental claiming that Pearlman had not been truthful about the earnings made by the group.In the following year, McLean, Richardson, and Dorough joined the lawsuit which eventually resulted in a number of settlements. In 2006 it was found that Pearlman had perpetrated one of the longest and largest running ponzi schemes in American history, leaving more than 300 million in debts. He was arrested, as the boys in the documentary state, in Indonesia and in 2008 he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison. For the man who basically ran Orlando, it is quite a sight to see his mansion in the documentary stripped bare by the IRS. Pearlman himself would be an interesting enough character to garner his own documentary and it was a shame that he had such a minor role in this one.

This of course is a documentary made for the fans, but anyone with an interest in a story of a group of guys plucked from childhood and thrust into the limelight, who find that when they are no longer the next big thing and have to rebuild their careers can find much to entertain them in this film.