Popular reviews

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  Review by Allison M. 🌱 ★★★½

  I greatly enjoyed seeing gospel singer Mavis Staples perform in the documentary Summer of Soul, and Mavis! is an overview of her life. Lots of great footage of her singing with Jeff Tweedy and Prince. There are some interviews with Bonnie Raitt and Bob Dylan too. I loved hearing about how she went to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s church. Definitely check it out if you are interested in gospel and/or blues.

  Watched on: Kanopy

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  Review by Steven Sheehan ★★★

  Another biog documentary that follows the traditional route and relies on the footage and music to carry it across the line. Mavis Staples herself plays a big part in keeping you engaged in her story, as her warm personality can’t help but shine through as she discusses various points of her career. Beyond this we never really get to really understand who she was in her younger years, or today as a veteran singer.

  The old performances dusted off for our pleasure, make this worth seeing, in particular her younger years performing with the legendary ‘Pops’ Staples and her sisters (The Staple Singers). We get a healthy dose of her early gospel work before joining Stax and the big time…

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  Review by Kurosawa ★★★★½ 2

  Now, maybe I'm wrong on this, but shortly after watching "Mavis!" I got to thinking that the success or impact of any given music documentary is nearly 100% almost guaranteed just by the artist and the quality of his or her music. You don't need to have brilliant camerawork and editing or new info and dramatic twists. Sometimes even paint-by-numbers music bio-docs end up being entertaining just coz nostalgia takes over and the viewer is satisfied enough by hearing bits and bobs of music of a band they like or are newly discovering.

  Not to suggest that director Jessica Edwards and her team fluked their way through "Mavis!" - no, not at all!
  But perhaps it's fair to say they…

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  Review by Liz Maupin ★★★★

  I’ll stop singing when I don’t have anything left to say. But that ain’t gonna happen.

  A very nice documentary, though a bit formulaic. I really foot-tapped and bounced a little when I heard Pops playing guitar. Oooooo it was so good. Seeing Mavis just continually be passionate about singing, being so spry and touring at 75 (at the time this was filmed, i think?) was lovely and captivating. She said she won’t stop and I think that is awesome. Just awesome! MLK Jr. called her “Stape”. That is also just awesome.

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  Review by loureviews ★★★ 1

  I L<3ve Musicals!

  Mavis Staples is a great singer and activist but this documentary was far too peripheral and perfunctory to really do the subject justice. So, despite her obvious greatness, I was a bit disappointed in what we have here.

  We have seen far too many films done in this way, with a bit of footage of the person being profiled, a set of talking heads who might be contemporaries or fans, and a wee bit of insight into the subject's life and times.

  Staples was born in 1939 and has recorded extensively with her family, The Staples Singers, as well as being a solo artist. Her dad was the legendary 'Pops' Staples. Bob Dylan had wanted to marry…

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  Review by Ethan Johnson ★★★½

  I wish this didn’t follow the traditional documentary route, but it did, and I also wish I knew who Mavis Staples was going into this so I would have cared a little more. 

  Still trying to gather thoughts about this one, but I mean the story was there, I just felt like the style of storytelling wasn’t up to par. 

  Intro to Film
  7/10 Films

  P.S. It probably didn’t help that I was talking over it most of the time with my friend. 

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  Review by Mike Kennedy ★★★½

  Mavis Staples has been performing for almost 70 years, beginning her career singing with her family, who soon became the Staples Singers, in churches and on a local radio show in the south side of Chicago. Jessica Edwards' documentary takes a standard chronological approach to telling Mavis's story, but it is such an important one in both musical and historical terms that this dull approach is soon subsumed by the material she had access to.

  The Staples Singers were one of the first gospel groups to swing in (literally) behind Martin Luther King and the fledgling civil rights movement and Edwards includes some fascinating footage from this era.

  She was also one of the early crossover artists. Even though there…

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  Review by Stankshadow ★★★

  This is a documentary covering Mavis Staple and her amazing career that has spanned over 60 years. The film briefly covers her career from her start with the Staple Singers on Stax records to her work with Prince and finally ending with her more recent work with Jeff Tweedy. It also covers her relationships with Pops Staple, Levon Helm and Bob Dylan. All of which could probably be entertaining topics for documentaries of their own. The film goes over everything pretty quickly but due to the length of Mavis's career I don't know how you could cover everything without a three hour runtime. A good documentary about a kind, talented and awesome person.

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  Review by Zā ★★★½

  I went to see Bob Dylan perform in concert a few summers ago because I had always been a fan of his work and you gotta see him once right? Well little did I know that I would be introduced to one of the best singers of all time as his opener, Mavis Staples. Her voice rocked my core. Her energy was unbelievable. Dylan is a legend in his own right, but nothing he did could compare to what she had given us as the first meal. This is a pretty good documentary to introduce people to her and why she needs to be a name that people need to write into the history books. Also if you haven't listened to her album We Get By you absolutely have to. One of my all time favorites.

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  Review by Michael_Elliott ★★★½

  The live and career of Mavis Staples is explored in this wonderfully entertaining documentary that covers her career in The Staples Sisters as well as her solo work.

  MAVIS! is a highly entertaining documentary that works on several levels but if you're not familiar with everything the singer has done then you'll have a much better understanding after watching this. The documentary features an interview with Mavis but also several people who know her or who have worked with her including Bob Dylan, Levon Helm, Marty Stuart, Prince and Bonnie Raitt.

  I really enjoyed this documentary as it did a really good job at laying out what made Mavis and her family so special and how they helped changed music…

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  Review by Ken Rudolph ★★★½

  Somehow I missed knowing much about Mavis Staples, youngest member of the Staples Singers, a family singing group that bridged the genres of gospel and blues in the decades following the late 1950s. From watching this entertaining bio documentary, I'm sorry I missed out. Mavis does intersect with some more famous stars in the film: Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, The Band, Prince. However, the revelations about her innovative guitar/singer dad, Pops Staples, and Mavis's recent career resurgence in her 70s make some very entertaining viewing.

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  Review by russman ★★★

  They didn't even acknowledge the girls from Lucius singing with Mavis in the beginning