Metacritic reviews

I love this kind of backstage documentary, which is not surprising for someone who has "All That Jazz" and "All About Eve" on his all-time top ten list.

A straightforward account of the show’s journey from conception to rehearsal to Great White Way triumph, it effectively doubles as a traditional let’s-put-on-a-show musical in its own right, albeit one with heavier guitars.

The movie can’t help feeling like a vanity affair — a shot of novocaine, instead of a letter bomb.

As a chronicle of how one rock star slowly fell victim to the Broadway bug, it’s kind of amusing.

As a stand-alone documentary, it begs for more conflict and a broader canvas from which to explore the contemporary theater scene.

If Broadway shows had DVD featurettes, the unexceptional documentary Broadway Idiot would be perfect for one.

The doc is slickly packaged, but it suffers from the pat reality-TV feel of manicured sound bites where greater candor and fly-on-the-wall observation might have been welcome.

It contains more praise than insights, and, chopped into several sections, the documentary could easily become a series of featurettes in the "Extras" section of an American Idiot DVD. Yet Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong still commands the screen.

This movie doesn’t make the case. In fact, had they upped the absurdity a notch, it would rival the comedy of Christopher Guest’s let’s-put-on-a-show mockumentary, “Waiting for Guffman” (1996). As it stands, it plays like an infomercial.

This documentary by rookie director Doug Hamilton plays more like a featurette on an American Idiot DVD than a stand-alone film.