Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter To Los Angeles’ on Disney+, Billie Eilish’s Concert Film And Hometown Tribute

LA native and universe-owning pop star Billie Eilish stages Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles (Disney+) on the storied ground of the Hollywood Bowl, performing her second full-length album in its entirety and transforming into a cartoon avatar of herself for a string of accompanying animated sequences. This thing is sure to make her thriving fan base swoon. 

HAPPIER THAN EVER: A LOVE LETTER TO LOS ANGELES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Dubbed a “concert experience,” Love Letter features all 16 songs from Billie Eilish’s recent second album Happier Than Ever, 56 minutes and change, performed chronologically onstage at an empty Hollywood Bowl by the Grammy Award-winning singer, her brother and regular musical collaborator Finneas O’Connell, and special guests including the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, Brazilian guitarist Romero Lubambo, and the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus. Accompanying the live footage, which was directed by Robert Rodriguez, are animated interstitials that feature a cartoon Billie cruising around LA in a live-action, mid-engine Porsche convertible, adding some noirish, Jessica Rabbit-style flair to the concert proceedings. (Disney-affiliated animator and Oscar winner Peter Osborne handled the direction of the animated sequences.) The subdued keys and lyrical self-reflection of album opener “Getting Older” purr to life, and we’re on our way.

Reflection is key to Happier Than Ever; it’s the record where a worldwide star, a contemporary pop music phenomenon, reckons with her fame, image, mindset, and media perception, and Eilish was forced to make it with 18 and life to go. As introspective as it is, and with its promotional rollout curbed by COVID restrictions, Love Letter serves as a kind of visualizer for Eilish’s new material, and tides over fans and observers until the 60-date, globe-spanning tour to support Happier Than Ever begins this September. Those Eilish stans number in the zillions, of course, so they’re sure to eat up these performances with a giant spoon and a side of avocado. The Hollywood Bowl stage remains largely unadorned at the outset, with Finneas off to one side on keys or bass guitar, a drummer at his kit, and Eilish in the center, utilizing the space to her advantage. But she uses the camera, too, occasionally singing directly into the lens with a look of mischievous glee. There might not be anyone in the Bowl’s box seats, but Eilish is definitely grabbing stans everywhere by their lapels and shaking.

As for the animation piece of Love Letter, the brief sequences have a gorgeous, languid palette, freely mixing between cartoon and real car, or bleeding animated evening from slices of Hollywood Hills aerials. Toon Billie surveys the cityscape from the roof of the Roosevelt Hotel, or she speeds along PCH in her Porsche. While a bit out of step with the more dynamic live footage, the animated bits do add mood and some stylish cues to the proceedings.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Recording artists are making a lot of movies these days. Documentaries, tour films, behind-the-scenes vignettes — their visibility helps move the units canceled tours could’ve aided, and if you can’t sell merch physically, it’s time to go digital. To that end, Love Letter joins Taylor Swift’s recent album cycle outing Folklore: The Long Pond Sessions, and even Eilish’s previous filmed effort, a concert film/day-in-the-life doc for Apple TV+ called The World’s a Little Blurry.

Performance Worth Watching: This is Billie Eilish’s show. She stomps and shimmies, but mostly fills the empty spaces of the Bowl with her striking mezzo-soprano, seemingly stronger than ever, and an interpretive yen that goes further to establish the songs from Happier Than Ever than any Spotify stream ever could.

Memorable Dialogue: “It’s a cute little full circle moment.” Love Letter mostly lets the music do the talking, beyond a few brief asides or song introductions from Eilish. But when the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus encircles the Hollywood Bowl stage to perform the haunting Gustav Holst-penned hymn that opens the cerebral, Bjork-like Happier Than Ever standout “GOLDWING,” we learn that Eilish once sang Holst’s Hymn to Vena when she herself was a member of the LACC. Full circle, indeed.

Sex and Skin: Nope.

Our Take: Washes of evening orange that lend a tinge of splendor to the harps, cellos, and xylophones of the LA Phil. The ribs of the Hollywood Bowl flickering into and out of stark illumination. Beams of bold red lancing through everything for the stark electro pulse of “Oxytocin” — this Love Letter is definitely lit. And while Eilish is rightly the centering pivot point for Rodriguez’s direction, there are plenty of accent moments. Close-ups and cutaways to the instrumentation, for example, or the way the children’s chorus stand as sentinels around the semicircle lip of the Hollywood Bowl stage, fueling “GOLDWING”‘s ethereal vibe. Love Letter to Los Angeles smartly cuts away the chatter and behind-the-scenes rigmarole so common to music docs in favor of emphasizing that one, boldest thing: the music.

It’s a good thing, too. As Billie Eilish’s career has gone ballistic, it’s been standard procedure to place her in the media landscape through signifiers alone. She’s young! She’s got an attitude! And what about her clothes?! It’s a tiresome narrative, and one Eilish addresses head-on with the caustic “Not My Responsibility” on Happier Than Ever. (In Love Letter, that song is rendered in stark, startling animation.) What this film best emphasizes is Eilish’s nuance, power, and studied craft. As her work continues to emerge from its formative space in Finneas’s bedroom recording studio, concert footage like this — even in its slightly stunted, audience-less form — becomes an important document of an artist who is continuing to prove how lasting and resonant she’s prepared to be.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles might be Billie Eilish’s tribute to her hometown, but it’s bigger than that as a film, serving to flesh out her standing as a live performer and lend visual panache to one of the COVID era’s bigger album drops.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

Watch Happier Than Ever on Disney+