‘The World According to Allee Willis’ Review: The Songwriter Who Stretched From ‘September’ to the ‘Friends’ Theme Song Gets a Lively Doc
variety.comDennis Harvey Film Critic Showbiz has always made for strange bedfellows. Still, it’s hard to fathom any single personality linking talents as diverse as Pet Shop Boys, Bob Dylan, Fishbone, John Tesh, Diana Ross, Dusty Springfield, Toto, James Brown, TLC, Lulu, Stephen Stills, Tanya Tucker, Bette Midler, Gladys Knight, Scott Baio and Richard Simmons.
Yet that list is just the tip of a collaborative iceberg for the subject of “The World According to Allee Willis,” about the late songwriter estimated to have sold over sixty million records.
Among many other accomplishments, Willis was also a compulsive archivist of her own very full life, so Alexis Manya Spraic’s documentary feels like a colorful sampler drawn from near-inexhaustible source materials.
Magnolia is opening this entertaining tribute to a hugely successful yet highly idiosyncratic artiste in limited U.S. theaters on Friday.
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