Studio: Eagle Rock Entertainment
Video: 4:3 Fullscreen color
Audio: English DD 4.1, DTS 5.1, Dolby stereo
Extras: Making-Of Featurette, Additional Concert Footage
Length: 165 minutes
Rating: ***1/2
Janet Jackson’s music is not exactly my cup of tea or area of expertise, so I have to admit it was with great trepidation that I approached this review. Right out of the gate I was almost voyeuristically spellbound by the seductive Ms. Jackson; a dreamlike sequence on a Hawaiian beach with a provocatively attired Janet Jackson opens the video. As she races from the beach through the jungle, she peels out of her already barely-there top, and as she slowly walks through the shallow water and enters a waterfall, very little is left to your imagination. It’s needless for me to point this out, but this was by no means any mere wardrobe malfunction. Countless legions of her male fans will no doubt be fiddling endlessly with the rewind and super-slo-mo buttons of their DVD players, and this titillating opening sets the stage for an erotically-charged evening with the alluring Ms. Jackson.
Not being a huge fan or intimately familiar with any of the music here, other than just casual exposure to some of the songs via pop radio, I feel compelled to admit that I didn’t find this two and a half hour concert nearly as laborious to get through as I imagined. I can’t help but liken it to my mid-seventies experience of seeing the rock dinosaurs Kiss live; while I was in no way a big fan of the group, it was, nonetheless, a truly engaging spectacle to behold, and I was struck very similarly by this Janet Jackson video. The elaborate and frequent costume and stage changes must have cost an absolute fortune to stage, and were truly entertaining to watch. Janet sweats her way throughout the evening (she must lose ten pounds each night!), often accompanied by a myriad of dancers; it sometimes feels as much like you’re watching an exercise video as a live concert! A moment in the concert that’s obviously a fan favorite comes during the song “Would You Mind,” when a rack-like contraption emerges from the stage floor, and Janet then meticulously picks a male audience member, who is then brought on stage and strapped to the rack. He’s obviously given a stern warning from the gentlemen who attach him to this gizmo, and Janet proceeds to essentially do a “pole/lap dance” on the shackled fan, who writhes in ecstasy and proceeds to sing every word of the song along with Janet in this full-contact duet. One of the two bonus features is a duplication of this footage, however with a different fan this time, who is so overcome with disbelief that he’s been chosen that he screams “I love you Janet!” non-stop throughout the entire number. Talk about getting up close and personal! Another song, “Son Of A Gun,” obviously is loosely based on Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” and opens with the original song’s trademark riff. Carly herself appears on one of the stages’ many huge video screens, and talks/raps through the opening of the song. Hip-hop superstar Missy Elliot then magically appears and takes the musical torch from Carly; I can’t begin to tell you how entertaining the entire affair was.
A few caveats keep this otherwise excellent disc from getting full marks. First of all, the video’s image quality was a tad substandard; while the image quality was pretty good overall, it could have been a touch sharper. The biggest sin is that the aspect video is only fullscreen; the video is sourced from a 2002 performance, so there’s no real excuse for the softness of the image quality or lack of widescreen presentation. Hopefully, should Eagle Rock decide to release the concert as a Blu-ray disc later on, they’ll correct these minor errors. For fans, and for the curious, this generously proportioned concert disc will prove absolutely essential watching. Recommended.
— Tom Gibbs
