Poi E

This review may contain spoilers!

There's really only so much you can do with a documentary about one song and sadly this one won't blow many people away. I would give Poi E a 4.5/10.

The soundtrack for this film is not unsurprisingly pretty incredible; not only is "Poi E" used so effectively but numerous songs from the time of the song's production are used and many powerful songs from Maori culture. Whoever was editing this film must have been having one hell of a time, the little subheadings to introduce interviewees are really funny and give this film a carefree feel. The documentary itself really does serve it's Maori audience well by putting a strong spotlight upon the impact this song has had on Maori culture; as a Pakeha observer it was eye-opening to me to see what this song meant to an entire culture.

There wasn't really enough content within this film to give the feature good pacing, you got bored rather quickly and had to wait for something really impactful to take place. I think some of the interviews and aspects of this film were just unnecessary and it seemed to me there wasn't enough content about this one song to really make a full-fledged feature film documentary. The cinematography wasn't consistent and the repeated use of shots became tiresome to look at after a while; the blend of constant sourced footage meant that the quality of the film was never consistent and we were subjected to some clear shots but a lot of grainy and poor quality shots as well.