Sunshine Superman - The Journey Of Donovan

Customer Rating:
Summary: Much more than Mellow Yellow
Comment: The first disc, the actual documentary, is very interesting and most insightful. Donovan is an amazing man with a great, loving heart. You have to respect a man who stands up and speaks, sings, lives his life so completely and honestly.
The second disc is filled with extras; videos made before we called them that, songs from concerts, interviews, short films, wow! Thanks, Donovan! I am going to get as many of Donovan's concerts as I can hunt down. Not only has he made some of the most adventerous music of the sixties and seventies, but he still is with us creating music to help us think and laugh and love. (Check out his "Sutras" album for a great example of his newer music.)

Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointing but not Surprising
Comment: I'm a huge Donovan fan. I own all the vinyl. I still find relevance in his music. But this DVD was so disappointing. Donovan is unnatural in his narrative posture, boastful and ultimately insecure, leading me to feel queezy and embarrassed for him. He is long winded in his awkward self servitude. I'll buy a new album if it comes out, and probably give this embarrassing dvd to a fan who adores him above and beyond his legitmate musical contributions. I have seen Donovan in concert a couple of times in the last few years and sadly, his pomposity too often eminates from the stage as well.

Customer Rating:
Summary: The self-consciousness of a dimming star
Comment: Let me preface my criticism with some bold praise:

Donovan's best music rivals that of the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, and all of his other musical peers from the 1960s and 70s. In addition to household pop hits like Mellow Yellow and Hurdy Gurdy Man, the Donovan library boasts dozens of more obscure masterpieces, like Peregrine, Marjorie Margarine, Three Kingfishers, Sand and Foam, and Please Don't Bend. He's a fine guitarist with a sublime voice and great versatility in his songwriting.

And yet, with such talent and so many accomplishments, Donovan has struggled to establish a lasting legacy. What's the deal? Dylan shows still sell out. The Beatles get a video game made after their music. Mere rumors of a Zeppelin reunion have fans all atwitter. But for Donovan, excepting occasional inclusion in a movie soundtrack, he's largely been forgotten by the masses.

If I were Donovan, I'd be saying to myself, "What about me? I'm just as good as those guys." Enter Sunshine Superman: The Journey of Donovan, essentially a three-hour extravaganza of Donovan reiterating that very message.

It's one thing to fall from fame, but it's something else to cling to it by your fingernails as you descend. In every latter-day interview I've seen, heard, or read, including SSJoD, Donovan seems obsessed with his own image, yearning to be remembered for his association with his more famous contemporaries, telling as many stories about George Harrison as he can think of. Troubled by the fact that modern pop culture is no longer singing his praises, he turns his soulful voice to the un-soulful purpose of singing his own praises. (Not what one would expect from a practitioner of Eastern meditation, which seeks to quiet the ego in search of greater truth.)

As a student of rock music, I expect a man in his position to bear an attitude of, "F--- it, it's about the music." But instead, I get the impression that he's after something more.

While better musical biographies, like that devoted to Tom Petty's career, feature primarily other artists talking about the film's subject, Donovan's documentary consists mainly of Donovan talking about himself. SSJoD frequently references other great artists, but they are conspicuously absent in their modern flesh. We hear plenty from Gypsy Dave and Donovan's wife Linda, but when it comes to high-profile personalities, we see only aged footage with somewhat scant connection to the artist himself. The filmmaker couldn't even muster a decent shot of an audience actually excited, as they should well have been, to see Donovan in his prime.

There is a single moment in the film, when Donovan and his wife talk about the 1980s, that we see a trace of humility about his dimming star. If only he could always exude this kind of awareness and acceptance about his career, he could be quietly revered as a brilliant musician who brought a feeling of peace and love to the souls of all who heard his music. That number may dwindle over time, but all things -- even great music and great musicians -- must pass.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Ballad of a crystal man
Comment: This could have been wonderful, as the film maker clearly had access to hours of film from the 60s.

Unfortunately, we see that footage only in glimpses and we have to put up with Donovan as he is today - sadly obsessed with inflating his place in the world, for most of both discs.

That he calls himself "Dr. Donovan Leitch" in the accompanying booklet (having got an honorary doctorate somewhere or other) is exemplary of his need to feel that he's achieved something. The cosmic waffle that he writes beforehand is just embarrassing.

He also 'performs' a couple of songs in a ridiculously mannered way - nothing natural remains, it seems, and any true humility seems to have departed long ago. Sad also, for one who loves the song "To Try for the Sun", to discover that Gypsy Dave was (and remains) a preening poseur.

But all this probably shouldn't deter anyone who knows how truly great Donovan's music was in the years up to (and including) "HMS Donovan", his last decent recording. In the sixties, he really did have the muse with him. There are glimpses of his genius here in old black and white film. Since then, he's done nothing worth having and probably that's at the root of his endless attempts to puff himself up. It's all very reminiscent of poor old Paul McCartney.

My hope is that someone will eventually release ALL of the 60s footage here, without the distraction of present-day Donovan trying to persuade us that he was some kind of gifted sage. Don, you weren't. The cosmic nonsense, the sapphic muse and the beat/bohemia stuff are really such a waste of your intelligence. But you were once a gifted singer and you wrote lovely songs when you focused on the natural world. Go there again one day.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Well, it certainly provides maximum Donovan..
Comment: Ok, this is a conditional rating.

If you are a Donovan fanatic, and I do mean a fanatic, consider this a 4-star film. If you own every album..on vinyl, have a Peace sign-shaped air freshner dangling gaily from your Prius, and can watch Billy Jack Goes To Washington without collapsing into apoplectic laughter, than you can probably listen, with rapt awe at three, very long hours of Donovan's love letter to himself, otherwise known as "Sunshine Superman: The Journey of Donovan", but anyone else is probably going to start questioning the existence of God about 20 minutes in.

It is truly rare in this world to witness anyone this hilariously narcissistic, and there can be some fleeting entertainment value in that. But three hours? Do you have any conception how long three hours can be listening to the vapid, self-important musings of a long-forgotten 60's folkie? Buy this bloody thing and you will find out.

This is not a documentary in any normal sense of the word. Oh no. This is essentially a three-hour interview with Donovan. Well, actually..since there is no on-camera interviewer, it is really Donovan interviewing Donovan asking Donovan things Donovan would like to tell you. Like how he taught John Lennon how to fingerpick. Or how scores of modern day pop stars are influenced by him. There are lots of nicely framed split-screened shots of Donovan in 1965 playing on a beach next-to a 60 year-old Donovan playing on a beach. If you like Donovan, this is your Donovan Schmorgasboard. There is barely a foot of film or a 20 second space of time that Donovan is not talking...about Donovan. Well, actually, about 2 hours and 20 minutes in, you hear Donovan's wife tell you more than even a Bonaroo security staff guy would want to know about astrology and "becoming one with the rock you're sitting on", but it is a nice breather from the ever present voice of, dare I say...Donovan.

Now you are probably wondering to yourself, between angry, indignant breaths, why someone who is evidently not a fan of Donovan, would be watching this in the first place. Well, granting you the point that I am not a Donovan fan, my response is that it has nothing to do with how awful this psuedo-documentary is. I am a musician, and a documentary fan. I watch and read scores of rock bios by all kinds of artists regardless of whether-or-not I like their music, simply because you don't have to be a fan of a bands music in order to enjoy a good story. The recent Peter Bogdonovich film about Tom Petty was one of the most interesting and rewarding 3 1/2 hours I ever spent in front of the boob tube, and I don't like Tom Petty's music either. But I did find, after a watching a well-made and down-to earth film, that I liked Tom Petty, and enjoyed hearing the story of how his band got together, fermented their influences into a style, lived with each other, made their albums, etc.

There is virtually none of this in Sunshine Superman. It is really an extended vanity piece in which Donovan waxes rhapsodically about everything under the sun, without the slightest hint of humor or self-depreciation..for three, solid hours. Now I understand that all entertainers, to a point, do what they do, because they think they can do something you will want to see, or hear. A small degree of self-involvement is practically a requirement. But in the history of documentaries I never seen an ego trip quite as egregious as this thing.

Part of the problem may not be The big D's fault however. Someone, possibly the director, had the bright idea of having Donovan host what is essentially his own tribute. It is much easier, not to mention much less irritating, to have various talking heads, critics, and musicians sing your praises for you. But when you are not only the story, but the story teller, everything takes on the almost wince-inducing feel of self flattery. And Donovan's utter lack of humor about himself only adds to the uneasy format. Something tells me that the only reaction you would get from telling Donovan a good, dirty joke would be a vacant stare, not entirely unlike that of a goat staring at a particularly complicated insurance form.

In three hours I learned suprisingly little about Donovan's recording process, or how his albums were made, or what other people thought of them, or which ones sold better than others, or about almost anyone in his vicinity. But I did learn an awful lot about cosmic conciousness, that he knew lots of famous people and that they admired him, that Sunshine Superman (the LP) was a masterpiece and that he didn't copy Bob Dylan.

Toward the end of this endurance test, there is footage of him playing on a rock by The Joshua Tree and going into great detail about it's spiritual significance while his wife talks very earnestly about mushrooms and Tarot Card reading. If there was ever a candidate for the hippie Spinal Tap, this is basically it. If you are a very earnest hippie, I assume this will not in any way dissuade you from buying this, and you may even find three hours of this inane drivel interesting, but even then, you still won't learn anything about Donovan that he didn't want you to know. Now even for the most ardent flower child...where's the fun in that?