Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl (2025)

[Mike Blakesley]

This isn't opening until tomorrow, and the key won't open until noon tomorrow, so I can't comment on the content.

I was surprised they were letting tiny little theaters play this, considering the previous "Eras Tour" concert film had a four-weekend requirement. But this one was originally an AMC program and they are apparently letting anyone else have it who wants it, and there's only a one weekend requirement. We have nothing else worthwhile to play so we're playing it.

As of now, from here it's looking like the worst marketed cinema event in history. A trailer dropped just last week, but it's only 20 seconds long and looks like it was produced by a 13-year-old with a computer equipped with free cheesy editing software. The one-sheet (which we have not gotten yet, and I'm beginning to wonder if we WILL get it) is the most amateurish-looking thing I've seen so far in the 2020s.

The whole thing screams "thrown together by a first-semester marketing class."

And yet I heard when it first went on sale, AMC's servers crashed.

I guess it's a big city thing. Given the level of excitement being generated around here, and the fact that we are not allowed to produce any of our own marketing materials, we'll be lucky to get more than 20 people all weekend. I hope I'm wrong.

[Brandon Wood]

If they would have announced this like two months ago rather than a couple of weeks ago, my little theater probably would've played it, even with all the insane rules about marketing and what not. We aren't open full-time at the moment, so we need some time to plan the weekends that we are open. This probably would've been a hit in our small college town, but oh well. I agree that the marketing is awful.

[Mike Blakesley]

We got onesheets today, finally. They look a little better in person than the online version. Still, TS being a billionaire and all...you'd think she could afford to hire some better marketers than this project has. This has "taking your fans for granted" written all over it.

[James Wyrembelski]

Did you double check any of the keys once they were ingested into the server? Our times are completely off from what is stated in both emails. The first email, everyone was set to unlock at 3 (when shows can start at 1)

The second email we received stated the correct unlock time but now the keys, once ingested, are unlocking at 5pm. (They went forward instead of backwards.......)

Called Deluxe and was given no promises on key issuance which means my first show might not even happen. I tried the first set (since 3pm is our first show) since at least I'd be able to have the show, but those are also incorrect. Showing an unlock time of 7pm!

[Dustin Grush]

Our keys unlock at 1300 tomorrow, which is frustrating because, being a drive-in, there's no chance to check anything. Even if we could do a 1300 show, it seems to be an unnecessary risk to have the keys open at exactly showtime.

I know Swifties will buy anything that Taylor sells, but I cant imagine anything but disappointment from this. From what I've read, Its a premier of the new music video, behind the scenes footage, and her personal reflections about things. Seems more appropriate for a series of Instagram Reels than a feature presentation, at a price that's higher then we charge for a double feature. Hopefully I'm wrong.

[James Wyrembelski]

Per my last post, this issue was on our end. There is a UTC offset that was causing the keys to read 4 hours ahead of time. We had to change the time zone to 4 hours ahead for the keys to read the time "correctly". Never noticed this before since we always get to test things out way ahead of time......not exactly right before show time.

This had better pan out. I gave up vacation time for this film. But after booking it and seeing that it does indeed sound like a series of IG reels, Im already a little miffed.

[Mike Blakesley]

Our neighboring theater down the road is ignoring the "two shows per day" mandate on Sunday and only playing it once. Our "normal" Sunday consists of playing a movie twice so we're just having a normal day on Sunday. We added a regular matinee and a "sensory friendly" matinee on Friday and Saturday respectively. I'm feeling zero buzz from it, but then again I'm not a teenage girl so we'll see.

[James Wyrembelski]

We have a few small places over here only running it once a day. I wonder if they'll notice.

I will say the opening track sounds great in the theater and is worth a view. Attendance is rather mild to tepid but those that are showing up are loving it.

There also seemed to be some confusion on WHERE this film was going to be playing. Most of the people I had show up last night ended up coming even though they had purchased tickets elsewhere. All of them had bought tickets to the AMC that's located about 2.5 hours away and were shocked when they saw our advertisement for it. They had assumed it was an AMC only thing. So, I wonder how many I may have lost simply due to that. Everyone else just automatically assumed we would not be getting it at all and went elsewhere. (Even I would have initially assumed this wouldn't be an offering for us).

[Ryan Gallagher]

Style of the feature aside, if big music acts want to make long form music videos for the cinema setting while they still can, and it DRAWS attendance, I’m all for it. Anything that brings a crowd is a positive for the struggling industry, especially cool when they are accessible to the more community family owned venues.

I feel like this non traditionally marketed one might build an audience over time by word of mouth among swifties if allowed to run long enough, or try it again every couple weeks?

Not everyone can afford live tickets or travel, Vegas trips, music sphere shows, etc.

[Mike Blakesley]

Our crowds so far have been horrendous, but I blame it partially on the fact the nobody knows about it. I had one pair of women come in last night saying they were going to go to Billings to see it until they happened to drive by and see that we had it. If we'd had the poster, say, a month ago, we could have been getting the word out.

Also the trailer (which we only had for one week prior) was a complete piece of crap. It was basically a Facebook short. It looked cheap. But, we were playing "The Senior" last week, so it's not exactly the target audience anyway. If anything, the Taylor trailer probably turned them "more off."

All that said, the people who are coming are liking the show. Maybe the word will get around a little. I'm sure next week we'll be hearing "Isn't that Taylor Swift show still playing?"

[Mike Blakesley]

My wife and I watched the Taylor show yesterday, because we had no money to count or restocking to do, so why not.

I actually liked it better than I thought I would, although the production was fairly cheap considering. It was basically a documentary on how they made the music video for the song "The Fate of Ophelia," and those sections were pretty fascinating -- it's kind of amazing the lengths they go (and the obvious money they spend) to make these vids.

It made me wonder how the kids are even seeing them nowadays, since MTV is a sewer of non-musical crap and even if it wasn't, nobody watches TV anymore anyway. I suppose most of them see music on TikTok, but since the average teen these days has a four-second attention span before they scroll on to something else, I really wonder how many people actually will actually see this vid from beginning to end.

Anyway, there is ALL sorts of discussion about how to arrange this or that shot, and I assume there is a lot of thought put into the "storyline" of the video, but even after having it laid out, it didn't seem very clear to me, so I don't know if the average 18-34 year old will get it. Maybe they will.

In between the documetary clips, we see "lyric videos" of all the other songs on Taylor's new album, each preceded by a shot of Taylor explaining the song's origin and/or meaning -- at least some of which are utter bullshit. For example, if you read the album lyrics to the song "Wood," you know that it's obviously about sex, but she makes up some nonsense about how it's about superstition, you know, like "knocking on wood." The production on these segments relies mostly on kaleidoscopic imagery and cheesy video trickery, not really much in the way of actual "production."

Most of the songs are uniformly catchy, although Taylor Swift is no great shakes as a singer. She has a way with words, but she also relies very heavily on all sorts of collaborators to make her songs sound the way they do. If she didn't have some killer producers, she would be nowhere. The lyrics are pretty high-school-drama-ish, and seem to come from around a 17-year-old sensitivity, but I guess that's her audience. I really wish she'd write some songs about the actual trials and tribulations she has in her life, such as:

I've got a show to do
But the jet is late again
They're busy gettin' fuel
I said who gives a damn

My shoes are hurting me
I threw 'em in the trash
Got several hundred pair
Glad I've got lots of cash

My mansion's way too big
I saw a fingerprint
On my huge bathroom mirror
Damn staff can't clean it right

You think it's fun and games
Being a billionaire
I'm sick of stadiums
And watching football there

Etc. etc. That said, some of these songs are absolute earworms, especially the aforementioned "The Fate of Ophelia" and my personal favorite, called "Opalite," which if it's not a number one hit, I'll turn in my nonexistent fan club membership card.

One concern a few people have had is the lyrics, because Taylor, for all her sweet image, has kind of a potty mouth, especially with the "F" word which pops up in a lot of her songs. But not to worry, the lyrics have been cleaned up for this presentation. I counted one "damn" and a "where the hell" in the lyrics, and one suggestive reference to "your magic wand," but that was about it. (Given the fact that she's a major influence on pre-teen girls (and she knows it), I'm surprised she doesn't keep her lyrics more in the PG category.)

The one place where this "event" really shines, though, is in the sound mix. It sounds GREAT. Lots of good bass, especially. Even though the songs sort of all blended together after a while, I was enjoying listening to our sound system strut its stuff. So if you are into today's pop music at all, you'll probably enjoy listening to this, if not necessarily watching it.

As a movie? One star out of five. As music? I'd say three stars, with at least one of those going to the production team.

EDIT: After writing this review I remembered that this is only a three-day thing. This movie will vanish into the ether after tonight, so what was the point of writing all of this? Oh well, I had fun writing it.


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[Lyle Romer]

Mike - I think you missed your calling as a songwriter!