Tribeca Review: “Boy George & Culture Club”

Boy George & Culture Club (Alison Ellwood, 2025) 3½ out of 5 stars

In Boy George & Culture Club, director Alison Ellwood (The Go-Go’s) brings us back in time to the 1980s, when George O’Dowd (aka, “Boy George”) and his Culture Club bandmates Mikey Craig (bass), Roy Hay (guitar and keyboards), and Jon Moss (drums and percussion) ruled the airwaves in the first half of the decade. Courtesy of enjoyable interviews with the four men, plus a vast array of archival material, Ellwood crafts a rollicking documentary portrait filled with great music. “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya,” you may say to yourself by the end.

We learn quite a bit about how the group was formed and the way the members’ respective musical influences merged to create Culture Club’s distinctive sound and hits. This is where the movie is at its strongest, Ellwood cutting back and forth from one person to other in a very cinematic flow that feels like a conversation. Given some of the conflict that eventually emerged post-success, it would have been nice to also see the guys together at the end, since a quick glance at Wikipedia shows that they have at least reconciled enough to continue to perform since then.

It started with Craig, who then recruited O’Dowd, followed by Moss and Hay. Boy George had previously sung with Bow Wow Wow before being let go (for, as he tells it, taking up too much space), and Moss had played for punk bands. Since they each hailed form different cultural backgrounds—Craig is Black and British with roots in the Caribbean, Boy George is gay and Irish, Moss is Jewish, and Hay, English—it made logical sense to call themselves “Culture Club.” Plus, as Craig recounts, he was a big fan of Tom Tom Club, and liked the sense of community inspired by that band’s name.

Another thing the documentary does quite well is remind us of the silliness of the time over Boy George’s sexuality. The “is he or isn’t he” press coverage appears laughable in hindsight, though given the current political climate in the United States, we clearly haven’t come far enough. Morons existed then and now.

Of greater concern to the band was the fact that Boy George and Moss were in a relationship. Gay, straight, or bi, it’s not always the best of ideas for colleagues to be romantically involved. Still, we fans got “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” out of it. So there’s that.

Despite the heartfelt revelations, the film never quite provides enough deep insights into the inner workings of everyone’s minds. I respect how much they are able to self-critique, but there’s a glossiness to the overall affair that keeps us on the surface of intimacy. There’s still plenty to celebrate—for fans and the uninitiated alike—so sit back and take pleasure in revisiting “Karma Chameleon” and more.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed

Christopher Llewellyn Reed is a film critic, filmmaker, and educator, as well as Film Festival Today's Editor. A member of both the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, Chris is, in addition, lead film critic at Hammer to Nail and the author of Film Editing: Theory and Practice.