This hagiographic romp through Robert Altman’s inspiring/exasperating career never gets beneath the surface of its fascinating subject. Home-movie footage and well-sourced TV/movie clips provide a tantalising patchwork upon which the narrative fails to build, with investigation of Altman’s methods limited to platitudes about a script being little more than a blueprint, and fleeting descriptions of his sound-recording techniques. None of the director’s flaws (his problematic portrayals of women, for example) is addressed, let alone examined, while failures such as the still-underrated Popeye are simply recounted rather than re-evaluated. Most annoyingly, a succession of collaborators (Bruce Willis, Julianne Moore, Robin Williams, Elliott Gould) are rolled out to deliver toe-curlingly gnomic definitions of the word “Altmanesque”, which reduce his enigmatic achievements to the level of a Hallmark greeting card.
