‘The Boy Band Con’ struggles to hide hatred for Lou Pearlman: Review

The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story isn’t so much a Ponzi scheme documentary as it is a bitter obituary for a now-deceased conman, written by the people who hated him most.

Viewers unfamiliar with the criminal enterprises of fraudster Lou Pearlman, the blimp salesman turned entertainment tycoon behind music acts like the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC, are in for a wild ride. 

Unfortunately, dedicated fans of the con artist documentary genre will struggle to find lasting value in its narrative, largely because The Boy Band Con‘s well-researched core is undercut by its unrestrained hatred for the star subject.

The documentary’s creators would like you to believe they have presented an even-keeled, factual portrait of the “real” Lou Pearlman — and they do that, but only up to a point.

The film begins by chronicling the creation of Pearlman’s boy band empire, examining the formation of Backstreet and then *NSYNC. A half hour into the film, the sparkly MTV clips give way to tense courtroom discussion as the severely underpaid groups go after Pearlman for allegedly stealing their deserved fortunes. 

For those who remember the original cases’ coverage, it is a factual retelling. Having been signed into rigid contracts that took advantage of their naiveté and ambition, the boy bands turn to the goodwill of the justice system to escape the legal shackles Pearlman’s lawyers placed them in. They triumph and move on to bigger and better things, evidently still angry, but sans Pearlman. 

In an attempt to answer the obvious question — “Why was this guy such a jerk to JT and his friends?” — The Boy Band Con pivots to examine Pearlman as a young boy, leaving the most readily verifiable part of the film’s narrative behind. 

Visiting his hometown of Queens, New York, the documentarians interview Pearlman’s childhood friends who discuss his love for aviation as well as propensity for fibbing. It is a personal, subjective, but seemingly well-intentioned look at the man behind the headlines. Then, things takes a sharp, tabloid-like turn. 

Each claim is somehow splashier, but briefer than the last. 

In a torrent of ill-paced, poorly explained, and really colorful interviews, the project’s large cast unleashes a firestorm of allegations against Pearlman, seemingly out of nowhere and with little exploration beyond their bullet point horrors.

Performers from Pearlman’s other groups, including C-Note, LFO, O-Town, and Innosense, offer up a wide array of accusations, ranging from pedophilia to death threats.

Pearlman’s childhood friends similarly turn on him, detailing stories of betrayed trust and lost connections as well as various incidents of low-level fraud.

Suddenly, an investigator from Orlando is added into the mix to describe an alleged Pearlman scam involving a modeling agency (as well as the bribing of a public official) that never got prosecuted.

Each claim is somehow splashier, but briefer than the last. That’s not to say some or all of them cannot be true. Rather, the various narratives appear so abruptly and in such a confusing order, it is difficult to follow how they connect, let alone assess their validity. Simply put, it is a very damning, very angry mess.

Notably, the film does provide a counterpoint through Aaron Carter, another former client of Pearlman. Carter serves as a steadfast denier of many of the claims against Pearlman, but he is also presented as the most emotional of the interview subjects, at one point screaming at the camera before bursting into tears and taking off his microphone. 

In a documentary with so many calm interviewees eager or at least willing to detail Pearlman’s misdeeds, the solitary Carter isn’t silenced, but his credibility appears to have been sandbagged — either through editing or his own profound feelings about Pearlman.

The narrative leapfrogs between these various allegations and a handful of Carter’s retorts before finally crescendoing with the reveal of the meat of this scam story: Pearlman’s historically successful Ponzi scheme, a complicated web of fraud that left victims over $300 million in debt and resulted in Pearlman’s incarceration. He would later die from cardiac arrest in federal custody at the age of 62.

Simply put, it is a very damning, very angry mess.

It is a confusing structure to an already confusing story. The scheme’s big reveal is weighed down by the dozen reveals that come before it and as a result its credibility and importance are substantially devalued. 

The obvious solution here would seemingly be to cut out this confusing grab bag of allegations and focus primarily on Pearlman’s Ponzi scheme — but unfortunately for The Boy Band Con‘s creators, that scheme wasn’t particularly interesting and likely didn’t merit a documentary. 

Sure, the scheme’s proximity to stars like Justin Timberlake and Nick Carter makes it of note, but lousy contracts, false promises, and shifty accounting aren’t new infractions and the way Pearlman carried the scheme out wasn’t novel or clever. As a result, the flood of unsubstantiated and unexplored claims in that bizarre montage are necessary for the film to be interesting enough and long enough to be worth making.

The next obvious solution to this storytelling conundrum? Well, possibly to not make the film at all. But for its creators and cast, that doesn’t seem to have ever been an option. 

In an interview with Deadline, former *NSYNC member Lance Bass, who also serves as a producer on the film, explained why they waited until after Pearlman’s death to tackle the project.

“I never really wanted to touch it until he was just out of the way,” Bass says. “I just didn’t want to deal with him.”

It’s a fair perspective, but explains exactly why the film doesn’t quite work. Not wanting to “deal with” Pearlman because of anger, frustration, or sheer hatred, rendered The Boy Band Con‘s creators incapable of assessing their subject in a meaningful way. Instead, they throw everything they’ve got at him in a rage-filled panic that’s not hard to sympathize with, but is nearly impossible follow, let alone enjoy.

It’s not difficult to say whether the hatred against Pearlman is justified — it is. He took advantage of some of America’s most beloved boys next door, irreversibly damaged the lives of dozens of his investors, and quite possibly may have done worse. But, in an increasingly competitive genre, a really bad guy at the center of your scam documentary isn’t enough to make it stand out.