To Be Frank: Sinatra at 100 review – patchy doc for completists only

‘When he sang, nobody cared’ … Frank Sinatra Photograph: Richard Drew/AP

After Alex Gibney’s rigorous four-hour Sinatra study All or Nothing at All, erstwhile Wham! boss Simon Napier-Bell’s plucky Brit equivalent appears patchy indeed, cobbling together washed-out, publicly sourced archive footage with variable-quality talking heads. Though erudite voices (Gambaccini, Ellen, Paphides) contextualise, breathless fanboy gabble steers us around the boozing and boorishness (“When he sang, nobody cared,” smiles Louis Walsh), and there are counterintuitive choices: even clips from the widescreen From Here to Eternity are framed in a ratio that shrinks rather than amplifies this legend. Completists may be happy enough, but it looks rushed and – such as when labelling Sinatra’s 1949 musical as Own the Town – perilously sloppy.

To Be Frank trailer