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Who Took the Bomp? Le Tigre on Tour
Kerthy Fix (USA, Next)
Wednesday, May 4, 7 p.m.
The Royal (608 College Street)
Thursday, May 5, 11:45 p.m.
Bloor Cinema (506 Bloor Street West)
Friday, May 6, 9:30 p.m.
TIFF Bell Lightbox 3 (350 King Street West)
In 2004, electro-fem/dance-punk/whatever-ya-call-’em trio Le Tigre charted a world tour in support of their major label debut, The Island. And they brought a camera crew along! Why it took so long for the film to come out is unclear, and it comes to Hot Docs at an odd time, considering that the band has been more-or-less inactive for the past few years.
All the same, Who Took the Bomp? is a peppy look at the group at the peak of their fame. A lot of tour docs revel in their subject’s debauchery or strained road-weariness, but Fix takes a more playful approach to Le Tigre. The group spends their days choreographing dance routines, giving hackish FM radio DJs a hard time, and generally goofing around between shows (at a festival date, they compete to see who can be the first to get a picture with the lead singer of Slipknot).
Fix and her crew put next to no effort into capturing the band’s supposedly phenomenal live shows, with the cameras more-or-less floating in place. There’s a lot of talk of how the group has fused punk and feminism, but nobody really questions how front-woman Kathleen Hanna streamlined the riot grrrl politics of her previous band, Bikini Kill, into a bubblegummy dance show. It’s pleasant enough spending more than an hour with Le Tigre, but at the end of the day, this is one of those films that feels more like a supplement to a glossy CD reissue than a real-deal documentary feature.