A rock star, a Mormon, and a cross dresser walk into a bar - what’s the punch line? They’re the same person! What odd series of events led to this amalgamation? Maybe it was a bad trip, or several. That was my initial response to Greg Whiteley’s first documentary feature, New York Doll. The film follows the rock and rigmarole life of Arthur ‘Killer’ Kane starting when he and some friends started the pre-punk hair band The New York Dolls in 1971.

For the first twenty minutes I swore I was watching an episode of VH1’s Where are They Now that somehow hijacked its way through theatres and into my DVD player. Eventually the pace steadied a bit and delved into the most interesting aspects of Kane’s life: his seemingly random conversion to Mormonism. There is absolutely no pre-Dolls biographical info on Kane here, so if you’re curious you should browse the net a bit beforehand. This lack of background stops the film from being a comprehensive portrait, but also indicates the nature of the band. We are made to understand that Arthur Kane was born of the Dolls, and his real childhood is irrelevant.

The highlight of the film is the reunion concert the Dolls participate in at Royal Festival Hall in London. This section is filled with aging punks, mods, hippies, and rockers that gathered in London one Summer - dredging up the now comatose beast of rock. I was beginning to feel embarrassed for the aging rockers until Sir Bob Geldof confronted the issue - and it’s definitely worth hearing his philosophy, told anecdotally next to a daydreaming Chrissie Hynde. The question is, when do the coolest people in the world stop being cool? What does it take? Can they ever be cool again? New York Doll confronts these questions, but does not necessarily answer them.

This is not one of the better rockumentaries I’ve seen, but then again it does boast a full interview with Morissey and some choice archival footage from The Old Grey Whistle Test; plus, at a trim 75 minutes it will hardly interfere with your dinner plans. So give New York Doll a shot - Morissey did.

-Mariah Klapatch