Decades before the term “poptimism” was coined and critics were hailing Carly Rae Jepsen and Charli XCX as geniuses, George Michael was one of pop music’s biggest evangelists. “We believe in pop music as very valid,” he declares in an old interview featured in Wham!, a new documentary about the iconic British duo.
Indeed, before launching his Grammy-winning solo career in the mid-1980s—which was ultimately cut too short by his death in 2017—Michael and his best friend Andrew Ridgeley demonstrated the musical possibilities and sharp political commentary that mainstream dance-pop tunes could deliver. The duo’s eponymous documentary, which premieres today on Netflix, is, in part, designed to showcase their underrated creativity over their brief but remarkable five-year run.
Unfortunately, the film falls short in demonstrating just how fascinating and subtly groundbreaking Wham! was beyond Michael’s exceptional talents as a vocalist, songwriter, and producer. While director Chris Smith (Fyre, Tiger King, 100 Foot Wave) makes a point to illustrate the British media’s condemnation toward the group and pop music in general at the time, the doc is just as uncurious about Wham!’s subversive artistry as the critics they dealt with during the rollout of their 1983 debut album, Fantastic.
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Even so, it doesn’t make the film any less watchable. By nature of the group’s optimistic ethos, Wham! is an energetic, feel-good, and even romantic documentary. Relying mostly on voiceovers from the duo, it abandons a talking-head structure to tell a more intimate story about Michael and Ridgeley. It’s also visually stunning, told through grainy, pastel images from Ridgeley’s mother’s scrapbooks and editorial-ready candids of the handsome pals. Of course, a lot of the film’s beauty is due to the gorgeous young men themselves—it’s admittedly hard not to swoon at footage of the big-haired, sun-tanned musicians frolicking onstage and in their stylish music videos.
With only a 90-minute runtime, the film moves briskly through their early days, including their first encounter in primary school, their initial ska-band venture The Executive, and their first minor hit after signing to an indie label, “Wham Rap!” Inspired by Ridgeley’s experiences with unemployment and sprinkled with shoutouts to the DHSS (Department of Health and Social Security), the hip-hop-inflected song is a rebuke of Margaret Thatcher’s conservative policies during the ’80s and is a fascinating entry point into Michael and Ridgeley’s penchant for political satire.
Most of the documentary, however, shies away from the pair’s political identities that frequently found its way into their music and business decisions. For instance, there’s a cursory section about the pair’s historic 1985 trip to China (which was captured in its own documentary released the following year, Wham! In China: Foreign Skies), but the Netflix film doesn’t frame this visit within their broader political involvement, which also included performing at a benefit concert for the 1984 miners’ strike and vocalizing their anti-Apartheid views. (In fact, one reason the band reportedly split was because a South African conglomerate threatened to take over their management company.)
George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley in Wham!.
NetflixThe doc similarly struggles with contextualizing Wham!’s place in the ’80s English music scene at large. While Michael hints at his homeland’s obsession with punk and the experimental rock bands that grew out of that craze, we don’t really unpack why it was so hard for the duo to be taken seriously at the time (though you can probably guess). In these moments, the doc could have greatly benefitted from outside commentary from a journalist or music historian who could have explained how Wham! was viewed critically or how they performed financially in comparison to other British pop acts.
Given his outsize role in the group, Wham! occasionally feels more like a George Michael origin story than a complete history of the duo. The film creates an interesting paradox of the singer as an extremely altruistic, socially minded man who was also extremely competitive when it came to the band’s chart positions and who frequently agonized over his legacy. Take, for instance, the release of “Last Christmas,” which Michael wrote solely because he wanted Wham! to earn a fourth No. 1 UK single in 1984. While the song did finally nab that top spot years later in 2020, its initial peak at No. 2 devastated Michael. He and Ridgeley ended up donating all the song’s royalties to relief efforts for the Ethiopian famine.
Michael’s then-closeted sexuality is another fulcrum of the film, though Wham! is noticeably less interested in Ridgeley’s inner life at the height of their fame. Following Wham!’s breakout, Ridgeley is largely depicted as a passive participant in his bandmate’s musical experiments. To be fair, he admits that music didn’t define him the way it defined Michael, but we still don’t understand what pushed him to continue making music after he seemingly lost interest. Michael also hints that he was tired of the media comparing their solo careers once he began to perform on his own, which is partly why he was so eager to end the group. But Ridgeley doesn’t expand on these frustrations in his voiceover, and for the most part, their dynamic is portrayed as lacking any friction at all.
Wham! ultimately suffers from some narrative gaps and missed opportunities; it would have been great, for example, to hear from their female backup singers Shirlie Kemp and Helen “Pepsi” DeMacque. Still, it manages to provide something as sweet and pleasurable as the group’s irresistible bops—like “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” “Careless Whisper,” and “Everything She Wants”—that are scattered throughout the film and keep viewers engaged. The film is most successful in conveying how much joy Wham! brought to the world, even if it was only for a split second in time.
