Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore? Feature Scores
Explore all 35 feature scores for Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore?, organized into pros and cons.
Scores by Feature
Summary
35 reviewed features-
Very positive 4.5-5.024 (69%)
-
Positive 3.5-4.47 (20%)
-
Neutral 2.5-3.42 (6%)
-
Negative 1.5-2.42 (6%)
Pros
Sort
-
The archive is one of the film’s clearest strengths: rare footage, home movies, photographs, documents, and television clips give the history texture and intimacy. Its personal material is also handled with notable sensitivity.
-
The music is a major strength, with classics and newer songs repeatedly described as joyful, barnstorming, triumphant, and enduring. “Common People” is an especially consistent high point.
-
The film moves easily between joy, nostalgia, and loss, with the Steve Mackey tribute and the band’s return carrying particular weight. Several reactions describe leaving energized, smiling, or newly invested in Pulp.
-
The film works for devoted fans while also serving as an inviting Pulp introduction for newcomers. Seasoned followers may know much of the history already, but the archive and performances still add fresh value.
-
Most reactions find the film engaging, joyful, warm, and fun, with the concert material creating strong momentum. The notable exception is the view that some O2 energy never fully reaches the screen.
-
Jarvis Cocker remains a magnetic, witty showman whose movement and emotional delivery carry the arena material. A little late-career creakiness and conspicuous autotune draw mild caveats.
-
The best editing fluidly cross-cuts old footage, memories, and current performances so each deepens the other. The archive-to-concert transitions are often singled out as smart and energetic.
-
The finales land strongly, with “Common People” providing a rapturous payoff and “A Sunset” adding a sweeter, forward-looking coda.
-
Cocker’s dry, self-deprecating wit gives the documentary much of its personality, while family and band anecdotes keep the history light on its feet.
-
The rest of Pulp is repeatedly praised as energized, committed, and fully engaged, with the ensemble sounding and playing like a cohesive live unit.
-
The show mixes large-scale spectacle—neon, galactic backdrops, screens, strings, and a grand curtain—with stripped-back moments that often prove even more effective.
-
Garth Jennings is widely praised for connecting archive and performance, preserving spontaneity, and handling personal material sensitively. The main split is the arena filming, which a few critiques find too basic or distant.
-
The rise-from-obscurity story is usually intimate, warm, and absorbing, especially when memories feed directly into the concert. Its weaker stretches compress later history or revisit familiar beats without enough depth.
-
As a concert-film/documentary hybrid, it is often praised as highly satisfying and even exemplary. A few reactions call it standard or slightly confused when the two halves compete for attention.
-
Self-belief, persistence, creative identity, and the need to keep making meaningful work give the film an accessible emotional message beneath the concert spectacle.
-
Celebration, melancholy, reflection, and warmth coexist comfortably, with the film generally avoiding either empty triumphalism or overly heavy nostalgia.
-
Loss is handled with restraint, especially in the Steve Mackey memorial and the use of family footage involving Cocker’s late mother and grandmother.
-
Themes of outsider identity, persistence, ageing, and holding onto youthful ambition give the concert material more meaning than a simple greatest-hits celebration.
-
Collage, scrapbook textures, lighting effects, and bold concert visuals give the film a strong Pulp-specific identity. A few reactions still find parts of the arena coverage too conventional or non-intimate.
-
Original flourishes, collage construction, and an art-house concert sensibility give the film personality, though not everyone finds the approach new; some later storytelling feels familiar or conventional.
-
The concert photography is the biggest visual divide: close-ups, silhouettes, and energetic shooting work well for some, while others find the O2 framing too distant and conventional.
-
The film benefits from treating concert staging and documentary storytelling as one connected project, with the creative partnership around the Pulp show described as unusually meaningful.
-
The documentary’s time-capsule feel and candid first-person storytelling come across as unusually honest and unvarnished.
-
The animated timeline and pencil-style illustrations add playful visual invention. The graphics flirt with twee territory, but their sparing use keeps them effective.
-
The band’s chemistry reads naturally on screen, from spontaneous stage interplay to small, playful moments such as Candida Doyle laughing with Cocker.
-
Cocker’s candid, cheeky narration and the archival interview material make the history feel personal rather than like a formal talking-head documentary.
-
The film is described as receiving broad acclaim, including an enthusiastic response from Joyzine.
-
Pulp’s smart, funny, working-class British identity is treated as a defining strength rather than generic Britpop nostalgia.
-
The Steve Mackey tribute turns a familiar love song into a moving reflection on a dear friend and creative partner.
-
The band’s history benefits from being told by people who lived it, giving the retrospective a sense of first-hand credibility.
-
The loose chronology still makes the people and their tastes easy to grasp, helping newcomers follow the story before dates become important.
Cons
Sort
-
The running time leaves two kinds of viewers wanting more: one response misses the full concert, while another feels 98 minutes cannot do the band’s history justice.
-
The concert-history alternation can be lively, but it sometimes feels cluttered, rushed, or prone to cutting away just as a recollection becomes interesting.
-
The later narrative is criticized for repeating a story many fans already know rather than finding fresh ground.
-
The Jarvis-centered focus is a clear tradeoff. Some coverage gives the whole band welcome space, but several critiques wish Candida Doyle, Mark Webber, Nick Banks, and the broader group history had more room.
Cast & Creators
-
FrontmanJarvis Cocker is the film’s magnetic center: a witty, candid narrator and expressive frontman whose stage presence gives the history immediacy. Minor late-career rough edges do little to diminish his appeal.
-
DirectorGarth Jennings is repeatedly praised for weaving archive and live performance together with sensitivity, spontaneity, and inventive visual touches.
-
KeyboardistCandida Doyle adds a warm, playful presence in the film’s smaller band interactions, including a lightly comic moment shared with Cocker.