Boy George & Culture Club: Movie Review

Boy George & Culture Club is a delightful documentary that recounts the band’s success while evoking strong nostalgia for the ’80s.

Over the next five years, the band consisting of four members, George O’Dowd, aka Boy George, Mikey Craig, Jon Moss, and Roy Hay, had incredible success. In fact, the release of hit songs such as “Karma Chameleon” and “Time” (Clock of the Heart) further endeared them to their fans. Still, as we all know, when it comes to show business, no climb to the top is without its challenges. In Boy George & Culture Club, the group members don’t shy away from sharing their hardships throughout the years, as well as their darkest and most personal moments.

At the beginning of Boy George & Culture Club, each band member speaks about their life before joining the band. What I found fascinating about this part of the documentary was learning about the vastly different musical influences and backgrounds each of them had. Boy George was a huge fan of glam rock. In the documentary, he even jokes, “I’m a goth that accidentally ended up in a pop band. It’s very upsetting.” Drummer Mikey grew up listening to reggae, while drummer Jon was big into punk rock. These contrasting musical influences may sound mismatched in theory, yet when the four members joined forces, it made them all the more unique. In fact, due to each member’s diverse musical background, this is how the group’s name, Culture Club, came to be.

In a series of sitdown interviews, the band members then detail how an appearance on the popular UK musical performance television series Top of the Pops helped put their name on the map and gain exposure to a much wider audience. The set of circumstances that led to this unplanned appearance makes you believe in fate and how some things are meant to be. The band wasn’t even supposed to take to the stage that night. However, as luck would have it, the cancelation of another artist made them gain a guest spot at the last minute.

Many documentaries portray celebrities in a highly positive light, often through selective storytelling and editing. Once you walk away from the experience, you don’t feel that you learned all that much about them as a person. Thankfully, in director Alison Ellwood’s documentary, that isn’t the case. Each member of Culture Club gets candid about the highs they’ve experienced personally throughout the years as well as the band’s lowest points. From drug use and addiction to a detailed account of the four-year relationship between George and Jon throughout the peak of Culture Club’s career, the film doesn’t hold back while taking fans on a trip down memory lane. 

Though this documentary doesn’t share any new information about the group, if you’re a big fan of Culture Club, the viewing experience will still be entertaining and immersive. Throughout its runtime, Boy George & Culture is jam-packed with nostalgic archival footage, stellar former live performances that showcase the band’s incredible talent, and a raw openness you don’t always find when celebrities discuss their backstories. Most importantly, this documentary reminds us that fame doesn’t make someone any less human.

Boy George & Culture Club was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 5, 2025 and will be screened at the festival again on June 6-12.