Back in 2018, former Disney star, now-chart-topping artist, Demi Lovato, produced a documentary about her “Tell Me You Love Me” world tour. The footage from the abandoned film projects a woman who is an emblem to substance abuse survivors and an advocate for mental health awareness. She’s selling out stadiums, and her fanbase is massive. On that tour, however, she also released the track “Sober.” Wherein she admitted to relapsing after six years of sobriety. Only a few weeks later, on July 24, 2018, the hit-maker suffered a massive overdose that nearly ended her life.
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Two years after the medical emergency, Lovato is once again seemingly healthy. And she wants to tell her story, come clean, confront her demons, and leave behind her manicured image. Rather than releasing the intended footage from “Tell Me You Love Me” documentary, the images that paint a picture of a happy sober pop star, she has now decided to pull back the curtains to show the painstaking ordeal she experienced leading to her overdose. In director Michael D. Ratner’s four-part Youtube distributed docuseries “Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil,” Lovato courageously attempts to reclaim her agency while falling into the same cycle of manicured myth-building she had hoped to leave behind.
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The biographical first episode, which recalls the days leading up to her near-death, should reveal few surprises to her fans. Lovato shared a strained relationship with her alcoholic, abusive father. He suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. These are facts that Lovato has always shared with her fans. That honesty, as we learn from friends and family, runs in sharp contrast to Lovato’s penchant for obscuring the truth. As her step-father explains, the singer succeeds at projecting an ideal image of happiness. No doubt, her habit of leaning on myth-making stems from her Disney childhood stardom, wherein sanitized images of cheery abstinent teens dominated television screens.
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As witnessed in the waning sections of Part 1 and the entirety of Part 2, the reality varies greatly from the fairy tale. Between footage from the aborted tour documentary, cell phone photos, and videos, Ratner can track Lovato up to the night of her overdose. For instance, tour images reveal a burned-out woman. Concert videos show her forgetting the words to her songs. Interviews with friends describe the singer returning to drugs while hiding the severity of her relapse. They all lead to the shocking July 24 morning, when her former-assistant Jordan Jackson discovered her client’s body lying unresponsive in bed.
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In the series’ second half, which documents the songstress’ recovery and returns to music, she claims the incident, wherein heroin and cocaine led to multiple-organ failure, strokes, and a heart attack — served as a wake-up call. She claims that she’s now ready, to be honest with herself and her fans. Ratner consciously lays the groundwork for us to question whether we can believe Lovato. His tracks, unfortunately, splinter. It’s clear that Lovato is sincere in wanting to change. She confronts her eating disorder, her mental health, and her sobriety while revealing details of two sexual assaults (one perpetrated by a Disney employee). And she shows enormous fortitude in revealing her shortcomings. But Ratner creates a problem for himself.
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Not only will skeptics wonder if Lovato is genuine, but cynics will also question if the documentary isn’t just PR fodder given its tone and shape. See, it’s really difficult to do a documentary where you purport yourself as being open, admit that every part of your image before this documentary was perfectly crafted to a star image, without causing viewers to think upon whether your current documentary is you, once again, crafting a star image. It doesn’t help that Part 4 is laden with celebrity cameos — Christina Aguilera, Will Ferrell, and Elton John appear. Or that her friends Matthew Scott Montgomery and Sirah more than fawn over the pop star. Or how her manager Scooter Braun essentially guides the narrative of Episodes 3 and 4. They add up to “Dancing with the Devil,” feeling as if it’s an extension of her marketing team, frankly.
By the docuseries’ conclusion, as Lovato advocates for moderation with booze and weed as a way to remain sober from stiffer substances, one questions if that’s the right message for her to send. It’s as if Lovato and Ratner don’t understand why her still ingesting addictive elements could lead to worry instead of calm. It’s one of the ways “Dancing with the Devil” is Lovato running away from one manufactured image to another. Albeit, this time, one she’s crafted herself.
And while she demonstrates courage to share the hardest portions of her life, the massive hurdles associated with drugs, her arduous physical recovery, and her own soul searching — the documentary’s staging also feels especially shallow. From the gauche title card showing the cloaked singer looking over a foggy mountain to the cheerleading interviews with friends and family, we don’t get the sense that the singer’s veneer has fallen. Rather it’s been reshaped and retooled for the moment. Causing Ratner’s unfocused “Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil” seems as if it’s restarting a dangerous cycle the singer claims to have left. [C]
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