Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Menudo: Forever Young’ On HBO Max, A Docuseries About The Massively Popular Boy Band Whose Members Got Kicked Out At 17

Menudo: Forever Young is a four-part docuseries, directed by Ángel Manuel Soto, that examines the massive popularity of the boy band Menudo, which went from doing commercial jingles and playing on ox carts in their native Puerto Rico to massive popularity in Latin America and the United States. The key to the group, started in 1977 by music producer Edgardo Díaz, is that the members would age out of the group at 17 and be replaced.

MENUDO: FOREVER YOUNG: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “New York City. 1983.” A massive crowd of preteen and teenage girls is screaming “We want Menudo!” outside of the hotel where the boy band is staying.

The Gist: With lots of archival footage, plus interviews with some of Díaz’s business partners and some of the many members the group had during it’s main run from 1977-1996, the first episode takes a look at the group’s early years, the business model that Díaz put together, and the constant churn of promotion and touring through Latin America that took the band members away from their families most weeks of the year.

Two of the interviews in the first episode are with “charter member” Ricky Melendez and Johnny Lozada, who joined in 1980, right before the band exploded and Díaz changed the business model that made new members salaried employees instead of sharing in the band’s profits. There are also lots of audio recordings of Díaz, who was not interviewed for the series. The focus of the episode is how the boys were subjected to a grind of travel, performances and promotion throughout Central America and South America, including some of the more dangerous spots in the region in the early 1980s, like war-torn El Salvador.

Learning from his promotion of the ’70s Latin pop group La Pandilla, Díaz learned that a) the brand is more important than the individual members, which is why he had them age out and replaced, b) the group should appeal to teen and preteen girls and c) parents need to sign over guardianship of their sons to him if their sons are recruited to join the group. This allowed them to tour incessantly without parental interference — but also without a ton of supervision, either.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Menudo: Forever Young reminded us of Parchís: The Documentary, which examined the Spanish boy band (that had one girl in it) that preceded Menudo by a couple of years in the ’70s and pretty much imploded by 1985. The beats are similar: Kids who are given way too much latitude and not enough supervision, cranking out money for people other than themselves.

Our Take: We were decidedly not in Menudo’s demographic when they invaded the States in the early ’80s, but we couldn’t avoid stories about their popularity, especially with preteen and teenage girls. We didn’t listen to their music, but we didn’t have to; we knew that the group members aged out of the band like a musical, less lethal version of Logan’s Run.

But what we didn’t realize at the time was that Menudo set the stage for every boy band that would come later, from New Kids on the Block all the way up to BTS. That’s why we enjoyed hearing about the band’s early days and just how ingenious (and exploitative) Díaz’s business model really was.

The first episode shows us the band as it’s about to break big in the United States, having already conquered most of Latin America, including the huge and usually insular Mexican market. What we would have liked to have seen is more footage and recollection of the band’s first three years, where they were still playing local gigs in Puerto Rico and doing commercial jingles. What was life like for the kids then? Was it at least close to normal? And what was the tipping point that made them go from well-known local boy band to international megastars?

One other thing we were looking for was some input from Menudo’s most famous member, Ricky Martin, who was in the group from 1983-89. It doesn’t seem like he’s in this docuseries — though we could be wrong — and it would have been interesting to get perspective from someone who tasted massive fame as a kid and somehow managed to come out of that and become even more famous as a solo artist, a proto-Timberlake, as it were.

Even so, it’s still an enjoyable ride, especially getting the jovial commentary from people like Lozada, who was there from the first phases of their mega fame. It doesn’t seem like it’s a cautionary tale at all, despite some of the accusations leveled against Díaz in the band’s later years, and the eventual sale of the band name after its sales hit the skids in the ’90s.

What we find out in this series is that Díaz isn’t Lou Perlman, who is spoken of derisively by most of the singers who were in his bands. It’s more of a loving tribute, especially from the people who were in the band itself; the grind the boys went through is presented as more of a shrugging, “well, that was the ’80s/’90s” sentiment than anything else. The refreshing thing about this series is that the members of Menudo who were interviewed appreciated the wild ride they went on, despite the allegations of abuse that members leveled against Díaz, which will be examined later in the series.

Sex and Skin: None, unless you count the tight outfits the band members started wearing around 1981.

Parting Shot: As the documentary moves to the dark side of how the members of Menudo had little to no supervision, we see the band and Díaz in a press conference, and Alfred D. Herger, who worked with him to promote La Pandilla says, “The wolf was watching over the chickens.”

Sleeper Star: Lozada is not only hilarious, but he seems to have a good perspective on Menudo’s rise to fame and his role in it. It might be because he was one of the members who shared in the profits and wasn’t just a salaried employee.

Most Pilot-y Line: Raul Reyes, brother of Menudo member Paul Reyes, talks about when the band switched from polos and jeans to Lycra and spandex costumes: “Edgardo’s vision at the time was precisely tight clothes against their bodies. Imagine the excitement these boys in tight clothes caused teenage girls going through puberty.” Things went from innocent to suggestive really quickly in those two sentences, didn’t it?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Whether you remember Menudo or not, Menudo: Forever Young is a fascinating look at the group that ignited the boy band phenomenon as we know it.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.