‘Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour’ review: Swifties will be plenty happy. And nothing else could possibly matter

As fan service, and as a bypass of the conventional Hollywood movie distribution model, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” has done the job.

Is this one of the great concert films in existence? No. One of the really good ones, at least? Not really. But rarely has that point been quite so beside the point.

It is two hours and 48 minutes of what the people wanted live, and what the people want to see again in movie form, or see for the first time because they didn’t see Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour concert in person.

The movie stitches together performance footage from three separate Swift concerts staged in August at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. Time after time, the SoFi Stadium sign looms large, provoking the question: Did any concertgoers end up taking out a SoFi bank personal loan to pay for those tickets?

Moviegoers have it easier, of course. I paid $22 for a 6 p.m. Thursday show at my local multiplex. Eleven of us were there. Nobody danced, but the screenings coming everywhere all the time this weekend and beyond surely will tell a bigger story.

Directed with unearthly slickness by concert-movie veteran Sam Wrench, “The Eras Tour” gives you most, not all, of the thre-and-a-half-hour live concert experience. A few songs in Swift’s set list didn’t make the final cut, including “The Archer,” “Cardigan,” “Wildest Dreams,” and “no body no crime.”

Both live and on the screen, the Eras Tour canvasses Swift’s 10-album, 17-year creative output, from irresistible fairy tales of teen romance (the ninth-grade wonder “Our Song”) to the 10-minute version of one of her finest, “All Too Well,” along with many other recent expressions of, well, everything. The price of fame. The accumulation of bad boyfriends and some better ones. Heat-seeking revenge. A songwriter trying to keep her head on straight when the world wants you, needs you, cries for you. So many teary close-ups of berserk and undone fans dot the footage of “The Eras Tour,” it’s like a river of adoration with no dam in sight.

Disclosure: I have lived a Taylor Swift life only now and then, mostly in the vicinity of the car or the kitchen, when “Shake It Off” or “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” came on by chance or by request. I love those songs, with their high-grade bubblegum hooks. Their place is secure in Swift’s many eras of pop, country, rock and folk reflection, and first-person heartache and triumph. She’s a magpie, with ever-shifting personae, and many of her 33 years have been lived in ever-brighter spotlights. Her song “We Never Go Out of Style,” also irresistible, feels like it’s stating what has been obvious for years now. You can’t go out of style if you never run out of styles.

Director Wrench has done concert specials and films with Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Brandi Carlile and many others. He’s not one to frame his subjects in surprising ways, or cut through a rigorously maintained aura. His challenge here, with the borderline-ridiculous enormity of the physical/digital/sonic live show, boils down to: How to give audiences a you-are-there feeling, but better?

With a musical production this visually overwhelming, with dancing, gliding video imagery working overtime, I could’ve used a less antsy editing rhythm, without quite so many cutaways to fans on the brink of rapturous collapse. (Dom Whitworth led an editing team of six.)

But even if “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” represents a triumph of novel distribution more than a triumph of the concert-movie form, its impact will be fascinating to chart. Swift is credited as producer. AMC Theatres did a deal with the Swift empire to distribute the film directly, thereby skunking the traditional Hollywood distribution model. That’s a very good deal for the multiplex chain that has enjoyed more lives than a cat.

AMC likewise will distribute the concert film “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé” Dec. 1. And the industry churn, like the beat, goes on.

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'TAYLOR SWIFT: THE ERAS TOUR'

2.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for some strong language and suggestive material)

Running time: 2:48

How to watch: Now in theaters

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