Gorillaz: Reject False Icons review – a swing through Damon Albarn's circus

Denholm Hewlett’s documentary is a quick scrapbook of behind-the-scenes moments captured on the band’s recording periods and on a world tour

It’s shocking, given the virtual pop-band conceit, that there wasn’t a full-length animated Gorillaz film years ago. However Reject False Icons, after Ceri Levy’s Bananaz from 2008, is the second “behind the scenes” documentary. It’s telling: Murdoc, 2D, Noodle and Russel have slowly been overwhelmed in the middle of the venture’s two-decade history by its operational actuality – which now verges on, as this film points out, 100 contributors. Making up for the truth that illustrator Jamie Hewlett’s gargoyle-ish ensemble are current solely in flashy cutaways, his son Denholm will get to prowl behind the scenes on recording periods for current back-to-back albums Humanz and The Now Now, and the world tour that Damon Albarn’s funky omnibus packed in around them.

The downside of family involvement is that every thing is strictly sanctioned. Albarn jokes in an after-credits scene concerning the directorial whippersnapper exposing all his “idiosyncrasities”. However they quantity right here to nothing more than being perpetually on muso cloud 9, orchestrating, among others, Mavis Staples, Little Simz, actor Ben Mendelsohn and one-time nemesis Noel Gallagher in the studio and on stage.