- Network: MGM+
- Series Premiere Date: May 31, 2020
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Critic Reviews
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That's just one of the many delicious, hilarious, fascinating, and sometimes poignant anecdotes in Epix's two-part Laurel Canyon, one of the great rock 'n' roll documentaries of all time.
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“Laurel Canyon” is a nearly four-hour exercise in bliss, throwing us back to a fleeting time when musical warmth and formal excellence went hand in hand and made the whole world want to go “California Dreamin’.” With apologies to Joni Mitchell, this, not Woodstock, is the garden you’ll be left wanting to get back to.
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Laurel Canyon: A Place in Time is immersive rather than analytical. The director has a sure feel for the essence of the period and its players, and for the social and emotional impact of their songs. Thanks to a superbly curated wealth of material and the ace editing of Anoosh Tertzakian, a world comes alive within the doc's relatively brief running time (the two episodes each clock in under 90 minutes).
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Ellwood isn’t telling us what to make of all this in the context of 2020, not any more than her subjects seem able to. They simply were as they were, and A Place in Time is merely a snapshot of a particularly fertile yet myopically flawed moment of youth culture. (Most of the good ones are both.)
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The lack of talking heads does get a tad monotonous, as does the constant identification of each voice speaking, but it’s a small price to pay for the fascinating stories that were collected from the archival interviews. Laurel Canyon really evokes the magic of the late ’60s and early ’70s and the area that generated so much fantastic music.
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“Laurel Canyon” is more of a straightforward documentary. It features dozens of talking-head (and off-camera) interviews old and new and footage of the likes of Crosby, Stills & Nash, Linda Ronstadt, Don Henley, Jackson Browne, the Doors and more. ... But there are cool little trivia nuggets sprinkled throughout.