This century being what it is, and the music biz being even worse than the rest of modern life, Jones supports herself and her stiletto-sharp J.B.'s-style retro band through old-fashioned barnstorming: They haul their gear around the world and, each night, knock off a couple hundred people's socks. It's a hard, honest life, and a demanding one. The too-quick clips in this documentary's opening moments suggest the power of her hard-funk art, but to feel it for real you need a longer exposure, to get caught up in it, to surrender your metabolism.
Kopple can't let the groove work its
Jones was a regular person longer than she was an indie-soul star, working as a corrections officer and singing in a wedding band before finally putting a record out at age 40. So she faces her diagnosis — and financial uncertainty — like people you know might: humbly, grateful for the help and love of those around her, well aware of how much worse others might have it. The closest to a celebrity meltdown we see is when she's briefly heartbroken that a November dinner with her bandmates has fallen through — they're the closest to
Kopple's film is intimate and rousing. We see Jones rejecting wigs, getting her head shaved, consulting with her doctors, knocking back
It all builds to a clean bill of health, a triumphant tour, lots of TV appearances and a feel-good ending belied by the fact that the story hasn't ended. Jones is again undergoing chemo treatments, this time for cancer in her stomach,