New Devo documentary draws raves out of Sundance Film Festival from 'Variety'

Devo’s not quite through being cool.

Although the band ended its regular touring career last year with a performance in Melbourne, Australia, the band, fronted by Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale, remains in the spotlight in 2024.

This week at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, the documentary, “Devo,” looking at the band’s 50-year history, received rave reviews for two heavyweights of Hollywood trade publications.

“For Devo fans, it’s 90 minutes of irresistible pop history and dazzlingly edited surrealist audio-visual candy. Watching the film, though, I could still see what I found a little ominous about Devo in 1978,” critic Owen Gleiberman wrote in “Variety. “The band wasn’t just playing their songs or proselytizing about “de-evolution.” They projected an image of where we were going. Nearly 50 years later, it turns out that they were right, but you actually didn’t need the last 50 years to see that.”

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And “The Hollywood Reporter”’s David Rooney offered similar praise in his review:

“Anyone familiar with Devo solely through their 1980 monster hit “Whip It,” or even a handful of other heyday bangers like “Beautiful World,” “Working in the Coalmine,” “Girl U Want” or “Freedom of Choice,” will likely find Chris Smith’s propulsive documentary enlightening as well as vigorously entertaining,” he wrote.

The positive reception for the documentary at Sundance continues streak of success for the band in recent months.

They released “50 Years of De-Evolution 1973–203,” a box-set retrospective of their careers featuring well known tunes and rarities that’s available to stream, on vinyl and CD.

More: Devo’s Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh talk about their new book on the eve of 5K DEVO in Akron

Mothersbaugh will release a new book of art, “Apotropaic Beatnik Graffiti," on March 12, which is described as “visual journey [that] features a collection of Neo-Dada stream-of-conscious visual poetry, representing one human's observations of life on a sliding planet.”

Directed by Chris Smith, a producer on the Netflix series “Tiger King,” Devo fans can only hope the voters with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame are paying attention not to just the notoriety, but the enduring influence the band has had for five decades.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Devo documentary draws raves at Sundance Film Festival