Searching For Sugar Man (2012)

SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN  (2012)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Malik Bendjelloul
A documentary that plays like a mystery, about a singer-songwriter from Detroit named Rodriguez, who released two critically acclaimed albums in the early 1970s and then abruptly disappeared. The albums went nowhere commercially, but somebody slipped the music into Apartheid-era South Africa, where it really took off, under the radar and beyond the reach of the repressive minority government. Meanwhile, rumors surfaced that Rodriguez had killed himself on stage, either with a gun or by setting himself on fire, but nobody really knew anything about him. Two guys decided to find out, and did, and this movie is the story of their quixotic quest, and more than that, the story of Rodriguez, who's had a career arc so improbable, it plays like fiction. You do wonder about his South African fan base, which appears to be 100 percent white, and while his three daughters are interviewed extensively, their mothers conspicuously are not. Numerous witnesses wonder out loud about why Rodruguez failed to gain any kind of following in the U.S. By the time the movie's over, and you've spent close to 90 minutes listening to his songs, you'll wonder about that, too.