Mark Reviews Movies: ALL I KNOW SO FAR

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 20, 2021

In P!nk: All I Know So Far, director Michael Gracey follows pop star Pink over the course of 20 days during a world tour. The singer is a dynamo on stage, belting out her pop ballads and rock anthems while running across platforms, swinging from a prop chandelier, and even flying over the crowd at a packed Wembley Stadium.

How she pulls off such physical feats and stunts without missing but a few words—and never missing a note she means to hit—is impressive. There's a brief story about that here, as she recalls seeing Cher in concert and being mesmerized by the acrobatic performers behind the singer. She wanted to do that. An acrobat then explained why that would be so difficult: A singer uses the diaphragm to sing, and an acrobat uses it to spin. Undeterred, Pink insisted, so the acrobat offered a test: She would punch the singer in the chest while she sang.

It must have turned out fine, because there is Pink, doing all of these stunts and staying in her raspy pitch. We see archival footage of her doing similar things at different venues and even performing while hanging—tethered, naturally—to the side of a building. It's all about freedom for Pink—doing what she wants, with no excuses and no limits. It's also about making sure her fans get a great show.

Gracey's documentary, unfortunately, does feel a bit too limited. Here, we mostly get a behind-the-scenes look at Pink's Beautiful Trauma World Tour, which ran for over a year between 2018 and 2019. The climax is a pair of performances at London's Wembley Stadium—her first time performing at that huge venue. If one is here for the concert footage, that person will be disappointed. If one is here to see the real Pink in between shows, there's a bit more of that, although one has to wonder how much of this is genuinely "real" and how much of it is just what Pink, who served as an executive producer, wants us to see.

This isn't to suggest that the singer is hiding something or being inauthentic at any point, while Gracey's camera watches her be a mother to her two children while juggling the preparation for and actually doing performances. Despite her obvious success and fame, Pink seems relatively down-to-earth and sincere—about her dedication to giving her all for her fans and ensuring that this tour is as much about creating memories for her children.

Through voice-overs, recorded and spliced over some scenes from a staged interview, she speaks honestly and lovingly about her two children, as well as some of her fears about being a parent. Is she doing enough? Is she doing the right things by and for her kids? Is her older daughter getting enough attention, being the quieter one between herself and her younger brother, a seemingly unstoppable ball of energy? Will her own childhood, spent with a single mother after a divorce that was difficult for a young Pink (then, simply, Alecia Moore), and insecurities eventually become an issue for her own children?

Pink remains vague about the specifics of her past and those feelings, and that's more than fine. We don't need to know everything about her, and even celebrities who agree to this sort of look-behind-the-curtain documentary deserve at least some privacy. The point is that she is thinking about, worrying about, and taking seriously all those often unspoken concerns and fears that, as she puts it, can cause a "multi-generational" "cycle" of disappointment and pain. Pink seems to be a very good place now, with her two kids and her husband Carey Hart (a former motorcycle racer who has become an attentive father and his wife's "rock")—not to mention a singing career that justifies a world tour. With the level of introspection and concern she reveals as these 20 days progress, one imagines her family can only be as good and become richer as time progresses.

When the documentary focuses on Pink and her relationship with her family, it succeeds quite well, since we're seeing her, in theory, at her most natural. There are cameras, for sure, but Pink seems too accustomed to them to really change much about herself. It all—riding in Amsterdam, playing on hotel couches with her son, having a heart-to-heart with her daughter about the girl wanting to go home for summer camp—feels authentic.

The other side to this movie is the professional behind-the-scenes stuff, which is almost as comfortable (Pink insists on keeping her background performers as long as they want to stay with her) and even more routine. A lot of that material—rehearsals for a show of which we only see pieces and some moments of the whole crew taking some time off—comes across as filler, and what we really want to see in between the moments of family life—Pink on stage and doing the actual performances for which the team is preparing—almost feels like an afterthought here.

The whole documentary is the basic promotional stuff, really, and that might be why some of this doesn't seem as "real" as it could. When P!nk: All I Know So Far is unmistakably real, it rises above the usual P.R. trappings.

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