Britney vs. Spears (2021)

Britney vs Spears has 'first world problem' written all over it. “Britney is no longer a free person. She has no basic human rights. She can't write a check or have a credit card.” Boo hoo, cry me a f---ing river. To be fair, though, Britney had nothing to do with this pseudocumentary, nor does she appear in it other than by way of archival footage.

This film is not only frivolous, but also sloppy — it feels, at best, like a glorified episode of The E! True Hollywood Story, and at worst, like an amateur YouTube documentary complete with Wikipedia article-style narration.

Britney vs Spears is guilty of the same sins as, say, QT8: The First Eight, though at least that doc had a few big guns and wasn't afraid to pull them out; here, however, we must settle for interviews with a “former assistant,” or a “former backup dancer” — the former of whom, by the way, claims that “Britney had a work ethic like no other, but she was never motivated by money” (hard to believe, considering that the whole damn conservatorship thing revolves around money).

One of the few interviewees who could be actually considered to have been close to the singer is her ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib. Now, since Ghalib is, by most accounts, the scum of the earth who profitted from invading Britney's privacy, it's very difficult to believe that he ever had her best interests in mind; the filmmakers, however, not only neglect the question whether Ghalib had an ulterior motive for entering into a romantic relationship with Spears, but in fact manage to present him as a victim.

"Two years ago I started making a movie about Britney Spears with journalist Jenny Eliscu," director Erin Lee Carr says. Two years, yet the final product doesn’t have either the sheen of workmanship or the conviction of obsession to show for it.