George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley were only together as Wham! for four years between 1981 and 1986. In that time, their success was so stratospheric – four number one singles, more than 30 million records sold, the first western pop act to perform in China – that Ridgeley’s mother, Jennifer, managed to fill more than 40 scrapbooks of newspaper cuttings, photos and any other piece of paper that even slightly referenced her son.
It’s through these time capsules that Wham!, Netflix’s glib feature-length documentary, charts the boys’ metamorphosis from two school friends playing ska versions of Beethoven’s “Für Elise” in their bedrooms to one of the most defining pop bands of the 1980s. Perhaps it’s precisely because the source material comes from Ridgeley’s mother that this film is one-note and overly fawning. You come away thinking that Wham! just weren’t all that interesting – something fans know is not the case at all.
Wham! arrives at a serendipitous time: what would have been Michael’s 60th birthday was last week, and Elton John paid tribute to his friend during his Glastonbury headline performance. We’re also approaching the 25th anniversary of Wham!’s debut album, Fantastic. The film starts years earlier, when Ridgeley and Michael met at school in Hertfordshire. It is peculiar but comforting to hear Michael from beyond the grave as old interviews provide the documentary’s voiceover. Then still using his real name Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, and lovingly called “Yog” by his future bandmate, he describes himself as a “very awkward, slightly porky, very strange-looking bloke”. Worlds away from the international sex symbol he would later become.
Chris Smith (who also directed Netflix’s Fyre and was a producer on Tiger King) tears through Wham!’s stuttering early days of trying to get signed to a record label. Although the EP they sent out featured future hits like “Careless Whisper” and “Club Tropicana”, they were shunned by execs. “A disappointing response,” remembers an ever-pragmatic Ridgley, while Michael, who seems to have been more emotionally invested than his bandmate, was “absolutely devastated”. Only when they put their tape through the personal letterbox of Mark Dean, a label owner who also represented Soft Cell and ABC, did they get any attention. They signed a (quite dodgy) deal with him in a greasy spoon café.
The entirety of the film is made up of archive footage and old interviews with Michael, Ridgeley, their manager Simon Napier-Bell and Michael’s father, Kyriacos. With no insight from anyone outside the band’s inner circle, the documentary fails to put Wham!’s success into any sort of cultural context, leaving it feeling more insular and restricted than intimate. The film makes no attempt to provide a historical backdrop, despite Wham!’s peak colliding with peak Thatcherism.
Anything that risks making the band look anything other than squeaky clean – Ridgeley’s party boy reputation in the tabloids, for example – is mentioned only in passing. Even Michael’s struggle to keep his sexuality hidden (as advised by Ridgeley and their good friend and backing singer Shirlie Kemp) is glossed over in favour of talk of chart positions and breaking America. While no one wants a gawking horror story about Michael’s troubles (which is what Channel 4’s salacious recent George Michael: Outed turned out to be), the more important, urgent story is ignored in favour of artificial positivity.
Anyone coming to Wham! with no prior knowledge of the band would mistake Michael and Ridgeley as far too pristine, too pop perfect to make for an interesting documentary. Even when “Careless Whisper” – a song written by both members of the band – was released as a solo single by Michael, there isn’t even a whisper of animosity or resentment between them. The most emotion we hear from Ridgeley is his admission that he found Michael’s taking over of songwriting duties “uncomfortable” – which he quickly follows up with: “I knew it was a sacrifice I had to make.”
Where the documentary does succeed is in painting a sweet, endearing picture of the symbiotic relationship between Michael and Ridgeley. While it’s tempting to pin Ridgeley as a hanger-on of Micheal’s talent, Wham! confirms that was far from the case. “He was so much more than the lucky guy who coasted along with George Michael,” says Michael of his friend, who he credits with bringing him out of his shell and being instrumental in creating the Wham! aesthetic (mostly sportswear and big hair). “I needed him.”
Wham! isn’t a complete waste of an hour and a half. It’s a fun celebration of a snapshot in time, when youth culture and pop music were at their zenith. But if fans are looking for anything deeper than a scrapbook of highlights, you won’t find it here.
