Pisaries Creator

Long before the Ashlee Simpson stage oops and she ran off in embarrassment, there was Milli Vanilli. This music duo was all appearance, and I won’t say talentless, but their own voices were not as good as the actual singers of their albums. Milli Vanilli is a documentary about the duo of Robert Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan. The documentary focuses on the rags to riches story of Rob and Fab during the 1980s. Both had less than desirable childhoods and found how enticing a record contract can appear without reading the fine print (from one viewpoint). What is clear is fame and lies destroyed their both their music careers. The documentary runs one hour and 46 minutes and is directed by Luke Kore.

Their producer Frank Farian and his business partner, Ingrid Segieth, claim there were no secrets among them in the contract. They say Rob and Fab knew what they were signing and had no problem getting the attention for their songs including Girl You Know It’s True. The first hints of being too good to be true is their lip-syncing fiasco during a concert and after they accepted their Grammy Award in 1990, their lies were revealed for the whole world when Farian confirmed they weren’t the real singers of the songs. Of course, Arista Records and Farian come out of this unscathed where Rob and Fab are raked over the coals. Only one member of Milli Vanilli comes out of the journey with some kind of redemption.

With all the different people having varying degrees of influence and control over Milli Vanilli as a pop-duo, Rob and Fab were hired for what they were supposed to do and it’s hard to know how much fault to place on them. Yes, they both should take partial blame, but much more falls on Frank Farian and Ingrid Segieth and Arista Records. The real singers, the lip-syncing performers, the writers of the songs, and those who catapulted the duo to worldwide success was a near perfect creation. I believe there was recognition of the impending disaster, but unfortunately it was used for selfish reasons. Even then, the truth still created more lies.

I rate Milli Vanilli FIVE FINGERS and ONE THUMB at 100%.