God Bless Ozzy Osbourne

Seven hundred seventy-seventh attempt to find something in Osbourne that was never there. Yes, a failure again. Ozzy never had the brittle disjointedness of Amy Winehouse, the unwavering integrity of Lemmy Kilmister, or the pop-culture loneliness of Kurt Cobain. On the contrary, he was an incompetent buffoon without any superstructure, desperately in need of someone to infuse him with life instead of another line of coke, which he only managed to do after latching onto Sharon Osbourne, who managed to keep him within the confines of his nursery (Cleopatra's description of him as a "scared child in an adult body" is rather apt). The documentary makers, obviously fans, refuse to accept this and wrap the entire film up by following Osbourne's tour for two years, which not even a tenth of the running time relates to. Instead, for the umpteenth time, we follow the rocker's life from infancy, through the most famous etudes of his life, which even my grandmother knows about, and with increasingly panic throughout the documentary it starts dawning on everyone that there's simply nothing to squeeze out of this material. Ozzy Osbourne is a man with an undoubtedly extraordinary voice (as much as it is the equivalent of brushing your teeth with a circular saw for me), but really nothing beyond that. And thus, in short, there was nothing to make a film about. (08/11/2016)

Whether or not you like Ozzy Osbourne, this look at his life is pretty honest, and the singer isn't afraid to reminisce about a time when he was truly useless. He does look a bit haggard even in the actual footage at the time, but you can see he's quite sober. He's not iconic to me, but as a personality he's interesting. (30/03/2017)