'Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour' is a great concert. Why doesn't the movie feel like enough?

“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” is exceptional at what it does.

I’m just not sure what it’s doing.

That’s not a comment on Swift’s talent as a performer, which is immense, and shines through loud and clear here. She has a particular genius for engaging an audience even when she’s not on stage; note the ballooning ratings for NFL games whenever she attends her kinda-sorta boyfriend Travis Kelce’s games with the Kansas City Chiefs.

It’s less clear what her concert film, directed by Sam Wrench, is trying to say cinematically. Which counts for something — this is a movie, after all, moving pictures and all that. The film is smartly edited, with plenty of shots of rapturous fans and Swift’s dancers and band members, in addition to Swift herself.

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It’s not a matter of just turning on the cameras and letting them roll, in other words. But it’s not tremendously far from that, either. Wrench does not seem to have much interest in establishing a distinctive visual style, like Jonathan Demme did with “Stop Making Sense” or Martin Scorsese did with “The Last Waltz.”

But that’s OK. “The Eras Tour” serves two purposes best — to capture a moment in time when an artist is at the absolute peak of her powers, and to offer fans a chance to share in that moment, whether reliving it or seeing it for the first time.

And that’s not nothing.

Swift’s Eras Tour is, after all, more than just a popular concert. It is a genuine cultural phenomenon. If you need more proof, Swift bypassed the usual distribution route for movie releases and made a deal directly with AMC. This is the power she wields.

The tour, for the uninitiated, draws from all of the “eras” of Swift’s career. This involves multiple costume changes — and fans dressing up in the style of the era of their choice. I’m not a die-hard Swiftie. I think a lot of her songs are generic pop. But some are much more than that, and a few are better, still.

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For my money, the songs from the “1989” era were the highlights of the movie — “Blank Space,” “Shake It Off” and “Bad Blood” are good songs to begin with and translate especially well to a stadium crowd (and a movie-theater audience).

Except for “Champagne Problems,” from the “Evermore” era. Swift is a polished performer, so much so that all the rough edges that would make things more interesting are missing. But singing this, she seemed natural and genuine, relaxed, just singing a song to tens of thousands of people like she was singing it to friends in her living room.

That is a neat trick, given the setting. The film, drawn from her shows at SoFi Stadium outside Los Angeles, captures that. The staging is epic, real Cecil B. DeMille stuff (look it up), and Swift herself at times seems honestly moved by the crowd reaction.

About which: Advance ticket sales were such that more shows were added a day before the film’s release. There are reports all over about fans singing and dancing in the theater.

My screening had some of that — mostly middle-school-age kids belting out the lyrics in the aisle — but not as much as you might think. Who knows why? Maybe industry estimates were inflated, or maybe this particular crowd was just lame.

But beside me was a girl, probably in her early teens, sitting with her mom. She looked at the kids dancing in the aisle occasionally. Why was she with her mom? Did she want to join in with the crowd?

I don’t know. But I do know that more often than not she sang along with whatever Swift was singing, and sometimes she clenched her fists and shouted the lyrics like she didn’t care who was watching, which is both as it should be and, for someone of that age, next to impossible.

That is what “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” gets right — at a historically divisive time, a chance to be a part of something. A movie of a concert is by definition one step removed, but this is about as close to the real thing as you can get.

'Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour' 3.5 stars

Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★

Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★

Director: Sam Wrench.

Cast: Taylor Swift.

Rating: PG.

How to watch: In theaters Friday, Oct. 13.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: 'Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour': A better concert than a movie