The scope shrinks in the final third, as Morgen seemingly retreats into a more comfortable linear chronology — the last twenty years of his life blast past as quickly as his first — but whew, this is one helluva technicolor starship.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney
Moonage Daydream is short on insight, and ends up feeling more enervating than enlightening.
Screen Daily by Fionnuala Halligan
Much of this film has never been seen before, and it is a true treasure trove. It feels, like Bowie’s career, though, incomplete, and certainly the period between his later-in-life marriage to Iman and death after the final, unsettling Blackstar recordings is vague and reliant on what the director/producer/editor calls ‘musical mash-ups’ which he designed and edited to have a trancey, hypnotic effect.
Unconventional, almost to a fault, Brett Morgen’s impressionistic, experiential Bowie documentary is an electrifying oddity.
Entertainment Weekly by Joshua Rothkopf
Pruning would hamper the unencumbered risk-taking on display, which extends to some atmospheric animation (as it did with Morgen's Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck), and instantly vaults the effort to the top of the Bowie docs. The music itself, gorgeously remixed by Bowie's longtime producer and friend Tony Visconti, has never sounded better or stranger, with isolations of instrumental passages that stick in mind.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
It’s a glorious celebratory montage of archive material, live performance footage, Bowie’s own experimental video art and paintings, movie and stage work and interviews with various normcore TV personalities with whom Bowie is unfailingly polite, open and charming.
More sensory experience than straightforward recounting, the documentary by Brett Morgen (“Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck”) is about feeling your way through a chaotic world with Ziggy Stardust as your anchor.
Moonage Daydream is a bracing, gloriously messy (or, more likely, gloriously messy seeming) celebration and immersion in all things Bowie.
Moonage Daydream, a wildly creative tribute to everything Bowie achieved over four and a half decades, sets a sky-high bar as cinematic fan-service, and it leaves you buzzing.