[yasr_overall_rating]
The life and career of the comic book writer and editor.
I’m sure fans of Stan Lee and Marvel Comics will eat this documentary up, as it is full of wonderful tidbits about the man behind some of the most iconic characters in comic book history. But some fans may be disappointed. While “With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story,” is essentially told by Stan Lee, with some narrative help, and chock full of celebrity commentaries, and neat historical information, the documentary itself is a disjointed mess. In an attempt to make the documentary “pop” there is a constant flurry of animated comic back drops to interviews, that are distracting and frankly dizzying. Rather than enhancing the documentary the excessive unnecessary animated stylings detract and cheapen the end product. But that’s just one of a few issues.
With this documentary, you get all the essential information. You get Stan Lee’s beginnings, his creations, some history on comic books (their boom, damnation, and revival), his personal life with his wife Joan, hardships (personal, professional, and otherwise), and his co-creator Jack Kirby. For those who do not already know much about Stan Lee, you will gain a greater appreciation for his work and eccentrically down to earth personality and lifestyle. But perhaps this may only be true if you can sit down and watch the whole thing through without being distracted by the shabby quality and poor editing in general.
Stan Lee is a comic book revolutionary and deserves better than what “With Great Power” has to offer. The documentary is comprised of interview segments of Stan Lee discussing whatever topic at hand in regards to his upbringing, entry into the comic book world, and so on. These segments are poorly pieced together. The volume fluctuates, the quality of picture changes, sentences are cut short, and the timeline jumps around quite a bit making it hard to keep up with facts. In between interview segments with Stan Lee, there are clips of celebrities speaking on his greatness, and oddly placed segments on Stan’s personal life with his wife, which are slightly more unnerving than endearing.
It’s a relatively short documentary (80 mins), originally produced for EPIX, and it definitely is a made for television quality documentary in the same vein of “E! True Hollywood Story” docs. If you can stomach the format you may glean some interesting facts and bask in the affable nature of Stan Lee, but if you’re in no mood to sit through the tedium of poorly edited and overly adorned material, you can give this a pass.
Now available on DVD & Digital HD
