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film review

Gaga: Five Foot Two.Netflix

There's a scene in vérité-style documentary Gaga: Five Foot Two in which the Poker Face-ed pop star plays a recording of a new song to her grandmother.

Joanne, the title track to the singer's new album, is a balladic homage to an aunt who died young. Resisting the pushed-for pathos, the grandmother compliments Gaga on the song but tells her "don't be maudlin." Gaga is disappointed, and director Chris Moukarbel probably was as well, for sappy seems to be his goal.

Multiple segments show Gaga in distress, in tears from chronic body pain apparently caused by a serious hip injury from a few years before. The film's narrative involves the process of making a new album, the preparations for her 2016 Super Bowl performance and the stripping back of Gaga from her glitz-and-glamour past.

So, we see her unadorned and fancy-free – the "real" Gaga letting it all hang out, boobs and butt-cheeks everywhere. The made-for-Netflix doc, which premieres globally on Sept. 22, is entertaining but manipulative. Gaga is always on, with Moukarbel carrying her water. And when it comes to the climatic Super Bowl scene, Five Foot Two comes up short.

The mythologizing of the selfless entertainer complete, the film ends without showing the Sunday show, leaving non-Gaga fans wondering: Yeah, but who won the game?

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