We’re going beyond the hype this week and putting our focus on a few films — some in theaters, some streaming — you might not have heard about, but should. Here’s our roundup. “Girl You Know It’s True”: One of the biggest music scandals to rock the industry came in the shocking reveal that the two lead singers of the late ‘80s/early ‘90s pop group Milli Vanilli lip-synched all their songs, never singing one friggin’ note.
That confession further tarnished the rep of the Grammys, which anointed the duo with its best new artist trophy, an honor later revoked. Director/screenwriter Simon Verhoeven’s entertaining biopic looks at how greed and fame fueled the calculated, infamous rise of the German group made up of two attractive Munich club dancers, the late Robert Pilatus (Tijan Njie) and Fab Morvan (Elan Ben Ali). Framed as sort of a rags to excessive riches story and as a well-deserved slap to the two-faced music industry, “Girl You Know It’s True” is executive produced by many involved in this public hoodwinking.
But while that gives you pause the resulting film doesn’t let either singer off the hook — showing how they became drug-snorting, bed hopping divas that demanded sushi (and flew into a rage if they didn’t get it) along with one red Ferrari. But it is sympathetic to their plight as well, showing how they, like so many pre-packaged performers (cooked up in this case by producer Frank Farian — played well by Matthias Schweighöfer in.