The first ten minutes of Don’t Look Back in Anger are a perfect barrage of archive moments catching the audience up on the disastrous end to Oasis back in 2009. There’s no sugarcoating here about how stupid, unprofessional, and downright disrespectful it was, with an announcer at Paris’ Rock En Seine festival having the thankless task of telling a booing audience that Noel and Liam fought backstage, the band broke up on the spot, and the gig was cancelled.
From that terminal low point, the documentary has only one place to go. The makers seem determined, however, to take the most meandering route to the inevitable destination. In truth, even at their peak, Oasis albums were always overlong, with song after song that could benefit from being pruned by a minute or more. Don’t Look Back in Anger has that same vibe: even the most myopically fanatical fans could spot calorie-free cuts that would make this a far more toned work, even while appreciating its relentless optimism.
There’s a hilarious movie still to be made consisting solely of the Gallagher brothers at their irascible best, taking the piss out of each other and the world at large, trading insults, while accidentally lapsing over and over again into unpretentious poetry and beauty. This might not be that film, but every time Noel or Liam opens their mouth, they’re any filmmaker’s quotable dream.
The two brothers single-handedly stop this documentary from being a tiresome experience. Again and again, I thought I might leave the cinema screening only to be won back by some nugget of genius from the big-mouthed Mancunians. Their genuinely sharp understanding of their place in the world has always been a redeeming quality. Noel was once asked, around the release of one greatest hits package or another, why so many songs from their first two albums were featured, and he unashamedly said there was no way he was ever going to match that streak of fire that made his name as a truly great songwriter. It’s a shame the film keeps getting in the way of the scene-stealing comedy double-act at its core.
One challenge is that this is a mash-up of several films. First, there’s a straightforward film compilation of concert footage. Then there’s a backstage, rehearsal and interview piece. Then there’s a film about fans, which feels like what the makers want to concentrate on, but there’s also an attempt to make a far greater claim about Oasis’ significance to world history and the past 20 years of troubles that, by coincidence, roughly overlap with the band’s absence.
To focus on that last item first, Noel and Liam later in the film make clear that only the dumbest, most egotistical artists hypnotise themselves into thinking they matter beyond the substance of their music and the catharsis their entertainment gives people. The filmmakers could have listened to them and focused on the more prosaic reality of Oasis, rather than making puffed-up, unsupported, and vague claims that Oasis mattered more broadly to history.
To the filmmakers’ credit, they clearly realised—as does Liam, who goes on a hilarious monologue about poor ol’ Mick Jagger having to dance every night at age 83—that Oasis are incredibly static on stage and that footage of the band performing in 2025 isn’t a thrilling visual journey. What it means is that it feels almost grudging when we’re given what most people have come for: Oasis’ bulletproof back-catalogue belted out on stage over the scream of the crowds.
There’s an over-swift jog past what went into the band agreeing to get back together. The coverage of the core duo’s sibling rivalry pre-breakup receives fair coverage. However, it would have been fun to see some of their comedic social media exchanges reproduced on screen along with highlights of their always hilarious bitchiness in post-2009 interviews. Then, there’s almost nothing about how they were persuaded to reunite. The suspicion lingers that it was a combination of Noel’s expensive divorce in early 2023 coupled with a very large cheque.
That fast footwork is followed by seriously foreshortened footage of the band’s rehearsals with Noel and Liam, Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs (guitar), Gem Archer (guitar), Andy Bell (bass) and Joey Waronker (drums) feeling their way into the songs. It’s a real shame, because the excellent sound quality, the ability to hear and see the shapes within each song, and the band’s dynamic make this the best footage in the whole film. For instance, seeing Noel in such intimate surroundings, playing solo on one of his trademark tunes, gives a chance to appreciate the ear-worm beauty of his instrumental work.
The drama really begins with Liam’s dramatic arrival on day two. The band seem simultaneously nervous and pleased to see him. While he makes a point of looking like really hard work to be around, he can’t even open a bottle without nonchalantly flicking the cap toward the camera and onto the floor, all the while gurning like there’s something distasteful smeared under his nose.
The inclusion of the footage of the band discussing Liam’s first rehearsal and Noel praising him for clearly ‘not giving a fuck,’ is met with Liam’s voiceover rejoinder explaining that it was fundamentally the opposite, that he truly loves the music of Oasis, and “it takes a lot of caring to not give a fuck”. The visible tension between the still semi-estranged brothers, Liam’s intensely aggressive vocal takes where he looks like he could chew the microphone into metal shards at any minute- this is compelling material.
Alas, that’s cut short, and suddenly we’re at the 4th July 2025 comeback gig in Cardiff. The expectant noise of a riled-up audience contrasts with dead silence in the backstage loading bay. It’s a telling audio/visual touch that escapes the pull of banal reality and gives a sense of the surreal pressure-cooker feel of being in a band quietly hoping and praying not to screw up, versus the absolute frenzy in the arena itself.
Noel, in an interview, is emphatic that his key character flaw is that he cannot ever forgive someone who has wronged him. Walking on stage in Cardiff, the divide with his brother is visible. Liam, hyperaware of the crowd and how to draw their attention, drops an arm around the shoulders of a supremely indifferent Noel who doesn’t even acknowledge it. Liam then forcibly grabs Noel’s arm and raises their hands together; one half expects Noel to pull his arm out of Liam’s grasp, and they’re not even in their stage positions yet.
Instead, the band strike up with—no surprises!—”Hello”, and the venue explodes. Everything about the next couple of minutes is chaos and transcendence as the audience goes into an absolute whirlwind of excitement, the music roaring over the top like the descent of dread angels from Heaven. Afterwards, clearly still caught up in the moment, Noel describes his brother as having pulled off an act of black magic sorcery, reversing time 30 years to the defiantly beautiful voice of his younger self, the man who wanted to go out and conquer the world, before they did and then couldn’t figure out what to do next.
Then the documentary flips again, and we’re in historical retrospective territory, but never in any kind of committed way, more history as whimsical asides. The group’s history has been well covered elsewhere, and nothing here makes for a legendary retelling. Instead, we dip in and out at random. At one point, the film mourns the death of Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield of the Stone Roses. Liam pays tribute to the inspiration that band gave him… Then, we’re off to something else. Nothing matters here for longer than two minutes.
Throughout it all, there’s the documentary’s biggest focal point and biggest flaw. Likely half of Don’t Look Back in Anger is taken up with footage of fans in concert, footage of fans outside of concerts, footage of fans talking… It’s interminably boring. The whole “we owe it all to you” fan-thanking move is standard issue for any long-running band. While it’s an utter cliché, that doesn’t make it untrue, but making it the majority of the runtime asks a lot of an audience.
There’s also the stock move in any number of music documentaries: showing fans in different countries, essentially shorthand for “this band is big”. It’s always deceptive and never compelling on screen: getting footage of excited fans at a concert is easy and ignores the billions of people who couldn’t care less. They could have whipped through this tour of people weeping, howling, applauding, singing in roughly a minute. No one watches a film like Don’t Look Back in Anger to stare at generic footage of crowds that could be anywhere, anyone. The filmmakers offer no original or profound point; they say nothing for an endurance-testing length.
The same goes for the brief zoom-in stories from specific individuals, all ultimately inconsequential: the woman with the non-verbal son who communicates that he wants to hear Oasis’ “Talk Tonight”; the woman who finds a homeless dog and calls it Bonehead; the woman injured in the Manchester bombing of 2017 who finds comfort in the song ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’… They’re touching in the way any emotional personal interest tales might be. Kids, animals, people with disabilities. These are default weepy pushbuttons being pressed.
I was still moved by the adoption of “Don’t Look Back in Anger” as an anthem for Manchester after the bombing, with its refusal to bow to those who would let the violence of psychopaths justify a tit-for-tat unleashing of grotesquery upon other innocents. In the film, Noel says categorically that, while he doesn’t necessarily fully understand the magic of Oasis, he knows what the music of Oasis is not: “It’s not some fucking right-wing thing. All are welcome. It’s all about ‘we’ and ‘us’.” That hopefulness in Oasis’ music has always been its most winning trait.
The film comes to an end with Noel and Liam stepping out on stage, hand in hand, this time in proper solidarity. Speaking to camera, the brothers show how far they’ve come over the years. It’s a wonderful finale, but there’s a strong feeling that we could have made it here far faster. A better movie would have kept its vision centred on the raconteur abilities of the two stars it keeps sidelining for no good reason. Noel and Liam provide all the gold, and their insight and humour keep you glued for two hours.