Post Malone: “Sometimes I feel like I’m not a real person”

August 17, 2022
2 MIN READ
A
A+
A-

There’s a moment in Post Malone’s new concert film when its star confesses to how surreal his life has become: “Sometimes I feel like I’m not a real person.”

Fans will get no clarity on that astounding statement after watching Amazon’s “Post Malone: Runaway,” a limp, uninspiring 60 minutes of flash with no substance. It’s unreal.

Not only does the bestselling, genre-mixing hitmaker himself not come across as a real person, the film never tries to help him. Fans won’t learn anything new, and the curious may even be turned off.

The documentary captures Post Malone’s first U.S. arena tour in 2019 — a 37-date tour through North America with stops in Los Angeles, Dallas and New York, among others.

The filmmakers — director Hector Dockrill and writers Sam Bridger and Casey Engelhardt — got backstage access without doing anything meaningful with it, ending up more like hype men than independent observers.

“Post Malone: Runaway” is in many ways like an hourlong music video, with some 10 songs — “Take What You Want,” “Wow” and “Rockstar,” among them — captured with shaky, distorted camera angles, interspliced with backstage glad-handing and tons of beer pong. Oh, so much beer pong. It both humanizes Posty but also makes him look like an overage bro holding onto childish things.

There are few moments in the film that show our hero not cradling a cigarette or a Solo cup, a tortured genius who seems perennially tipsy, screaming out his lyrics in a sort of existential crouch onstage and getting angry about beer pong rule violations after shows.