‘Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story’ Review: Hulu Rock Doc Is More Leisurely Victory Lap Than Deep Dive

Angie Han
·6 min read
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Here is an incomplete list of people who might really enjoy Hulu’s Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story: Longtime Bon Jovi fans, who know this story by heart but love it enough to want to hear it again. More recent converts, eager to fill in the gaps of their knowledge. Individuals who are deeply invested in Jon Bon Jovi as a person, and wondering how he’s been. Jon himself, presumably — though the frontman has stressed that he did not have final cut, director Gotham Chopra has assembled a portrait as reverent as any celebrity might reasonably hope for.

Everyone else — the casual listeners, the total newbies, the gossips and (at least in my case) the critics — can probably keep walking. Thank You, Goodnight is a perfectly nice retrospective, approachable and amiable and affectionate. But that’s not the same thing as saying it’s a particularly insightful one. Even as Jon subjects himself to what must have been dozens or hundreds of hours of interviews, he (or perhaps Chopra) keeps himself at too much of a distance to come fully into focus.

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As suggested by the clause in that title, Thank You, Goodnight: The Story of Bon Jovi is technically about Bon Jovi, the band, and not solely Jon Bon Jovi, the individual. There’s no question, however, that in the series’ mind, Jon is Bon Jovi. The series includes lengthy interviews with other bandmates, including keyboardist David Bryan, drummer Tico Torres, bassist Hugh McDonald and, most intriguingly, former guitarist Richie Sambora, whose abrupt departure in 2013 still seems to have Jon in shock. (Bassist Alec John Such was not interviewed before his death in 2022.) But it is Jon’s perspective that takes priority, and it tends to be a flattering one. In many of his sit-downs, he wears a white shirt against a backdrop of bluish light. In combination with his easy charm and bright smile, it casts him in a nigh-angelic glow.

Much is made by both Jon and his colleagues of his relentless work ethic (“Jon quit school ’cause there was recess,” a friend jokes), and the four-part, five-hour docuseries follows his perfectionistic lead. Chopra painstakingly compiles old photos, interviews, home movies and concert footage to trace Jon’s journey, from childhood through his four-decade career as an arena-rock god.

But far less energy is spent placing Bon Jovi within a larger cultural context. It’s a shame, since some of the show’s most evocative bits are the brief sketches we get of the working-class New Jersey scene that gave rise to Bruce Springsteen before Bon Jovi, or of the “black t-shirt crowd” who would convey their disapproval of the band’s not-quite-metal sound by pelting them with coins. Even Jon’s supposedly electric stage presence is more talked about than shown. Maybe you just had to be there.

Woven throughout this dutiful history are scenes of Jon in more recent years, as Chopra follows the singer through his 2022 tour, subsequent vocal surgery and grueling recovery process. Jon isn’t entirely averse to letting his vulnerabilities show. When Chopra asks at what point he realized Sambora wasn’t coming back, he ruefully replies that he still hasn’t. Backstage at the 2022 shows, he swings between the giddiness of getting to perform live, the disappointment that his voice isn’t what it used to be, the hurt at the negative reviews he’s getting as a result. Months after the surgery, he winces to hear himself sing in private — he still doesn’t sound like himself, and he knows it, and the Charlie Brown-esque slump of his shoulders suggests he’s utterly heartbroken about it. For a moment, it feels like we’re watching the guard come down completely.

Mostly, though, Thank You, Goodnight is content to simply sit back and admire Jon. While it occasionally, halfheartedly promises a warts-and-all portrayal — “Are we telling the truth or are we gonna lie, what are we gonna do?” Sambora asks in his first appearance, which is positioned almost like a cliffhanger at the end of episode one — the series is more respectful than raw. Notably lacking are the sort of candid, specific details that might foster true intimacy. As much as Jon prides himself on his iconic lyrics, he evidently prefers to speak about his own history in PR-friendly platitudes. The decadent ’80s? “Without giving away too many secrets, anything that any one of those bands talked about, we did it too, and it was fun. It was real fun.” The lessons he learned from his brief early stint with another band? “Don’t not be a visionary.”

A favorite trick of the series’ is to look at hard or messy things only from the rearview. Reflecting on the band’s induction in to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018, Jon admits that he’d been “upset we weren’t in there earlier.” But that’s the first we’re hearing that Jon had been hoping for the honor at all; his favorite line up until that point has been to insist that they were never doing what they did for the critics or the prizes or the money. His humility at finally getting the prize certainly makes for a prettier picture than his frustration at not getting it would have, and Jon and his bandmates do not owe it to us to dish up old dirt or divulge their most private feelings. But such reticence sits at odds with his assertions that the documentary is about showing “the real me.”

If anything, the closest we get to the “real” Jon might be what exists in elisions like those. You can look for him in the negative space between the guy who humbly insists he’s “just the ringleader” of the Bon Jovi operation and the guy whose leadership philosophy is “just trust me, and I’ll take us where we need to go.” And in the gap between his insistence that he could make peace with the end of his career if he had to and the pressure he puts on himself to not just keep going but get back on top.

Maybe Jon really is as modest and grateful and serene as he presents himself to be; for sure he’s someone who believes he is, and wants you to believe he is too. These tensions don’t make him look bad, so much as simply human. But Thank You, Goodnight is here to celebrate an icon, not to reveal a man.

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