Before discussing the actual Miss Americana documentary, I’d like to briefly talk about my relationship to Taylor Swift, since I feel like that’s going to be a huge factor in any person’s enjoyment of this documentary. So, if you’ve never liked her, I’m obviously not recommending this documentary to you. However, I’ve unapologetically been a huge Taylor Swift fan for about 5 years at this point, and it’s probably been one of my interests that’s received the most amount of backlash. I always found this to be really interesting, because there always seems to be a large subset of people that hate anything that’s popular. I used to be in this group back in high school, and so I used to be among the crowd that didn’t like Taylor Swift. Once her 1989 era hit, though, I started to listen to some of her stuff and realized that I actually did like it. I got more and more into her, and realized the tremendous amount of talent I had been missing out on up until that point. While I used to group Taylor Swift among the rest of the talentless pop stars out there (although at this point I actually do have quite a few others that I like too), now she stands out to me as one of the most talented artists of our generation. It’s to the point where when people ask me who my favorite bands/artists are, I say The Beatles, Queen, and Taylor Swift. For some reason, people really resent me when I lump her into the same category as the first two, but I just find her music to be really powerful and meaningful. So, to sum all of this up, I came into Miss Americana as a HUGE Taylor Swift fan.

So, it might surprise you to look at the score of this review and wonder why it’s as low as it is. Well, the main reason for this is that I really only liked the first two-thirds of the movie. Miss Americana pretty much delves into three generalized aspects of Taylor Swift: her personal life, her music career, and her politics. While the first two-thirds of the movie showcase a lot of those aspects of her personal life and music career, pretty much the entire final 30 minutes is dedicated to her political views. I found this to be majorly disappointing, and it’s what leads me to my major problem with this documentary.

I was excited to see a movie about Taylor Swift’s life, and while I got that for the first hour, it then became way too politicized. This movie is heavily pushing the agenda of SJW politics, and so if you’re as fed up with hearing about this stuff as I am, then you’ll be disappointed with this too. I think my disappointment with this comes because of my views on Taylor Swift as a person up until this point. I’ve always viewed her as unique, standing out from the rest of the crowd and persistently pouring out her soul into her music even when the world was against her. Now, she’s spouting the same rhetoric we hear from all of the SJW types, and it makes her feel like everyone else. And regardless of how I personally feel about the politics presented, this aspect of the film is just so uninteresting. Swift isn’t bring any new or fresh perspective to the table, she’s just saying things we’ve heard a million times, and I think it’s insane how big of a focus is placed on it in Miss Americana. I guess I’m just disappointed that such a generic product came out of someone that I admire so much for always being unique.

With that being said, though, I did genuinely still like the first two-thirds of the movie quite a bit, and that’s why it’s not getting a lower score than I’m giving it. When the movie is actually focusing on the personal life or career of Taylor, it’s a really interesting documentary. Some of it you’ll already know about if you’ve been a fan of Taylor Swift, such as her feud with Kanye West, but there was some stuff in here that I had never even knew about her. One example is that she used to starve herself whenever she’d see unflattering pictures of herself in the media. Her opening up about these body issues felt really genuine, and this is the stuff that I found most fascinating about the movie. While Swift had trouble procuring usage of her old material due to a battle of ownership with her previous record label, there is a lot of old video footage that’s utilized here, and it’s put together in a really cool way. I just wish the whole documentary could have focused on this material, because when it’s at its best, Miss Americana really hits.

In the end, it’s not like I didn’t like Miss Americana, I just found it to be disappointing. I enjoyed most of the material in the movie, but I just didn’t like some of the messages that were pushed towards the end. However, I’ll end the review with this. One thing I’ve learned from being a fan of Taylor Swift over the years is that we tend to view celebrities as not being real people, but that in reality they go through all of the same things that we do. I’ve always seen Taylor Swift as nothing but authentic, and even that hasn’t changed here. I support her in whatever direction she wishes to take her career, but if this is a sign of her becoming an activist then I’m not sure if I’m going to involve myself in much of that. I respect her decision to go after what she’s passionate about, but it’s just not what I’m personally looking for out of her. One good thing I’ve noticed is that Taylor Swift has gone through many different phases since being in the limelight, since she’s constantly changing and evolving. So, even though I’m not a fan of where she’s currently at in her career doesn’t mean that things might not turn around. And for what it’s worth, if nothing else then Miss Americana does at least do a good job of portraying what Taylor Swift has been like at different stages in her career, and so the reason the documentary leaned so heavily into the politics is because that’s what she’s been most focused on lately. At the end of the day, though, it’s her music that means the most to me, and so far it hasn’t really suffered much. So, while Miss Americana might have disappointed me a bit, I still support her and consider myself to be a Swiftie at heart. I still think this movie is worth watching, but I know people are going to come into it with all sorts of biases, so you kind of just have to know what you’re getting into if you choose to watch it.

3/5