It’s hard not to compare “Made in America” to “Dave Chappelle’s Block Party.” “Block Party” was just that, no self-aggrandizement, it was completely about the music and its transformative power to bring people together. “Made in America” wants to be too many things: about the festival, about the artists, and most pronounced about Jay-Z’s ascent from Marcy Projects, to the film’s detriment. And while this is my criticism of the documentary, it’s also its merit. We witness Jay-Z as a generous patron saint who has the clout to pull something of this scale together, to celebrate artists of different genres and ethnicities, revive the local Philadelphia economy, and somewhere along he tell his rags to riches story.
The documentary would have benefited from decentralizing Jay a bit. Rather than having the artists talk about their stories, maybe have childhood friends or others tell that story for them; this would have given the documentary more grit and perhaps more credibility.