The title of this fly-on-the-wall documentary following the pop star Pink and family on her 2018-19 world tour is taken from a recent song in which the Pennsylvanian lung-buster explains her life thus far to her daughter Willow. Traipsing round various European cities, we learn en route that the singer also wrote letters, to be read in the future, to her eldest child on the day she was born and on her first day at kindergarten. Her commitment to her two kids – which goes as far as taking them on tour – is touching, and Pink fans will doubtless be hopping at the prospect of being invited into the domestic circle. But this undemanding work, directed by The Greatest Showman’s Michael Gracey, comes across a bit like another family memento for their own mantelpiece.
“Re-sil-ience,” is how Pink chops up a difficult word for her two-year-old, Jameson. Dealing in similarly manageable chunks with the biathlon of parenting and high-end stadium performance that is her life must be the only way of getting through it. The singer is admirably hands-on with both her children (with husband Carey Hart on daddy day care), as well as working out the details of a painstakingly choreographed stage show that at points is close to musical theatre. One interesting point is the physical strain on her: the film points out that the former gymnast often simultaneously sings and performs acrobatics, two activities that pull in different directions. Her wire stunts on show at Wembley stadium, dozens of feet above the arena floor, are truly hair-raising. (Perhaps that explains the coiffure.)
But there is little narrative, beyond the Wembley gig approaching; and, more crucially, little conflict, outer or inner. Gracey lets Pink run with too much bland affirmational musing, ranging from the diverse family that is her crew, to the self-actualising lifestyle in which she is raising her children. This all serves to bolster her Streisandesque diva status, but it comes across as a bit self-congratulatory. The fanbase will cheer the fact she has outgrown the self-questioning and fractured home life – cursorily detailed here – from which she made her early career. But that happiness – notoriously difficult to make drama out of – is perhaps left to her songs.
