The Globe and Mail - November 5, 2005

"Made in Canada"
Andrew Ryan

The setup: It's the early career of Canadian songstress Shania Twain, starting with her days as an eight-year-old prodigy singing in Northern Ontario bars for tips and moving straight on through to her breakout success as the biggest-selling female country artist of all time.

The talent: Shania is portrayed by Meredith Henderson, most recently of The Adventures of Shirley Holmes. Canadian actress Megan Follows gives a memorable performance as her mother, Sharon. Also: The movie was directed by eight-time Gemini Award winner Jerry Ciccoritti.

Why you should watch: Shania's success story really is remarkable, and it's played out in equal measures of tragedy and triumph. The film depicts Shania's personal devastation by the death of her parents in a car crash, after which she became a single working mother to her own brothers and sisters. There's also first-time insight into Shania's relationship with symphony conductor John Kim Bell (Darrell Dennis) and the influence of her grandfather (Gordon Tootoosis) who introduced her to native music.

The message within: There's just no replacement for that dogged Canadian determination.

Source: The Globe and Mail

Toronto Star - November 7, 2005

"Shania Doesn't Sing; Unauthorized Bio Misses The Real Story"
Rob Salem

The most obvious flaws in the new CBC biopic, Shania A Life in Eight Albums (tonight at 8) are contained within the title.

For one thing, they are not real albums; they are chapter headings disguised as mock-up album covers, an awkward conceit undermined by the fact that portions of the life they attempt to describe are not up to such intense and intimate scrutiny.

But then, this is not, strictly speaking, the life of "Shania" at all. The unauthorized TV biography tracks the tortuous rise of a precocious young singer and aspiring songwriter named Eileen (or "Elly" and, briefly, Sofia) Twain - she does not in fact even consider the switch to Shania (borrowed backstage from a costume seamstress) until the film's next-to-final act.

And it ends just one phone call shy of the quintessential happy ending the voice on the other end belonging to future producer and husband Mutt Lang.

Of course, Eileen A Life in Search of a Recording Contract does not have quite the same ring. Nor, for that matter, does A Life with Eight Men - if anything, as depicted here, the various phases of Twain's formative years are defined by whoever the nascent superstar happened to be sleeping with at the time.

Now, these are admittedly fairly flippant observations, but they are close as I can come to explain why Shania is such a disappointment. What is it about this textbook rags-to-sequins story that defied even the celebrated skills of director Jerry Ciccoritti (the brilliant original Trudeau bio) and veteran series scribe Shelley Eriksen (Traders, Cold Squad)?

The young Twain's early life was anything but uneventful and would certainly seem to have all the requirements of compelling biographical drama the dirt-poor rural Ontario upbringing, the obsessive stage mom in a mixed-race marriage, the ambitious young talent aching to be taken seriously ...

The rebellious digression into '80s headband pop, the false starts in Nashville, the first bad reviews in Toronto, the frustrating years as a back-row chorine at a northern resort ...

And then, of course, the life-shattering family tragedy that brought her back home to regroup and re-embrace her roots. And yet, only 24 hours after screening Shania, the only thing that really sticks in my mind is the endless succession of really bad wigs.

That, and the nuanced performance of former moppet Megan Follows as Twain's loving, if troubled, mom, who does not get nearly enough time on screen - herein lies a TV movie unto itself, at least as viable as the Walter Gretzky bio that ran in the same CBC time slot last night.

But then, this is Shania's story, or rather, Eileen's.

I am anything but a fan, and could not name more than a couple Twain hits - but then, presumably because it is unauthorized, neither can A Life in Eight Albums. Instead, we must endure endless reprises of country classics like Hank Williams's "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry."

Of the three young actresses who portray her throughout her early life, the most evocatively Shania-like, at least to my untrained eye and ear, is the teenaged Shenae Grimes, sandwiched between the perky, precocious 8-year-old Reva Timbers and the 21-year-old Meredith Henderson, who I found myself unable to separate from her 13-year-old incarnation as TV's sleuthing Shirley Holmes.

To their shared credit, and that of pre-eminent local vocal coach Elaine Overholt, all three girls do all their own singing, something even the real Shania herself would likely find a daunting challenge.

Source: Toronto Star

Edmonton Journal - November 7, 2005

"Shania biopic a Twain wreck: Performances deserve a much better script"
Marc Horton

Shania: A Life in Eight Albums feels more like a life in one album, played over and over and over again. It could be the longest 90 minutes in television this year.

It's possible, of course, that the life story of Shania Twain, surely familiar enough to anyone who might care, could make a decent biographical movie for fans. This isn't it.

In fact, Shania: A Life in Eight Albums is repetitive, disjointed and riddled with the showbiz cliches that have been around since Broadway Melody of 1936. There are the struggles, the setbacks, the callous producers who won't let Shania do her own songs. There's a pushy stage mama and plenty of siblings. There is poverty and pain. There is a terrible family tragedy. There are men of various levels of sophistication, none of whom are quite right for our girl, until she runs into mega-producer Mutt Lange, the man who would become Mr. Shania Twain, a biographical fact that's somehow missing in this film.

There are even entertainers who tell each other to "break a leg" just as they're getting ready to go onstage. Not once or twice either, but every damn time, it seems. It will make sensitive viewers, unlike me, wince in embarrassment for the both the writer and the performer.

Me? I wanted to throw my cowboy boot at the screen.

And, oh yes, there's also The Whippoorwill Song that we hear a half-dozen times. And -- wouldn't you just know it? -- when Shania is at her saddest and sounding too darn blue to cry, she starts it again. Just as the song ends, the telephone rings and, dang it, there's Mutt on the line asking to produce her next album.

It sure is funny how life works, huh?

So often do we hear that particular song that it's clear the producers of this film failed to get permission to use much of the real Shania's oeuvre, if that isn't too pretentious a word for the kind of pop song that Twain writes and sings.

Director Jerry Ciccoritti is in love with the use of flashbacks ... and flash-forwards. The film, therefore, has the quality of whiplash that does nothing to make it more interesting or, even, more comprehensible. A little chronological coherence might have helped.

The performances deserve a better script, although Meredith Henderson, one of three actors who play Shania at various points in her life, sometimes allows herself moments of overacting. Like the real Shania, however, she's a winsome lass indeed, and she can carry a tune. Or, at least, the tune of The Whippoorwill Song.

Of the lot, Megan Follows turns in the most interesting performance as Shania's mother Sharon Twain. Nevertheless, her part could have had more shadows and nuance. As it is, Sharon comes across as the country music version of the stage mom in Gypsy -- there's nothing she won't do to get the kid another gig in another town.

A positive note, however, is the unerring sense of place in the film. The bars through which Shania travelled on her road to fame are dank, sweaty, smoky places and many of the scenes perfectly capture what saloons in northern towns are like. You can almost smell the spilled beer.

A squib at the end of the film makes note of the fact that Shania herself did not have a hand in the production of this film.

No kidding.

Source: Edmonton Journal

Victoria Times Colonist - November 7, 2005

"Fine Tuning: A Close-up Look at Tonight's TV"
Alex Strachan

Shania: A Life in Eight Albums is yet another one of those dramatized biopics TV seems determined to crank out by the hour, but this one at least sheds some new light on its overly familiar subject.

The Timmins-based, Sudbury-filmed TV movie, directed by Made in Canada and Trudeau vet Jerry Ciccoritti, features three actresses as the young Shania Twain, when she went by the name Eilleen.

The oldest of these, 21-year-old Ottawa native Meredith Henderson, familiar to viewers of Canadian kids' shows from YTV's The Adventures of Shirley Holmes a number of years back, is canny and believable in the role of a struggling singer dealing with poverty, peer pressure and family tragedy on the road to Nashville.

Megan Follows delivers yet another solid performance as Twain's mom -- it's impossible to imagine Follows delivering a single sour note these days, no matter what she plays -- and the movie is not bad as these things go.

Whether you'll appreciate it or not depends entirely on your tolerance for biopics in general; for some of us, particularly when the subject is still alive, a really good documentary is far more compelling.

Source: Victoria Times Colonist