KEY POINTS:
No topics were off limits. No questions went unanswered. This was the promise of the Britney: For The Record documentary (last night, TV2).
Such promises - and what are they promising? Revelations, presumably - are meaningful only if the topics and the questions were the ones that might deliver revelations.
But you do have to wonder what insights Britney might have about herself. She is still in her twenties, a superstar who has been famous beyond anyone's dreams since she was a girl.
Her life is weird, the interviewer said.
"Do I know my life's weird?" she said. "It's all I've ever known. I don't see it as being weird."
Weird is being chased by 50 paparazzi. Weird is having to walk behind a (rather grubby looking) sheet when you go to a shop. Weird might be shaving your head in a shop.
Why did she do that? Lots of people shave their heads, said Britney. But maybe it was about "feeling free or, you know, shedding stuff". If it was, she was asked, why didn't she tell anyone that's what she was doing? "I didn't think it was anyone's business, really."
She is very sad. She cried; you can't have a comeback doco about a star who has been carted off to hospital on a gurney without tears. Her life is so controlled it feels like Groundhog Day. Daddy said he put her back in the studio to give her something to do. "I keep her busy. She likes to work." She does a very funny impersonation of Daddy being controlling.
This is weird: here she is all grown up (after having been all melted down) and her affairs are micro-managed by her father, who she calls Daddy, and who makes his daughter's breakfast while her hairdresser does her hair.
A revelation: one of the biggest stars in the world has grits for breakfast. What are grits anyway? That was a good question and it didn't go unasked, or unanswered. Grits, Daddy Spears explained, is the "Southern girls' breakfast of champions."
Brit likes cheese in her grits. Daddy uses Velveeta, which is that stuff that comes between bits of plastic wrap which, when removed, reveals a square of yellow stuff that looks like... plastic. Watching For the Record was a bit like unpeeling a square of plastic cheese. Once you got the wrapping off, you wondered why you'd bothered.
Despite that early promise of no limits, nothing unanswered, was there perhaps a concession of failure in the interviewer's question right at the end? "What do you say to people who will say you haven't told enough?"
Brit had a nice answer. "I'll have a good book one day. A good mysterious book."
She came across as a sweet, funny, smart young woman who works hard and is struggling with her ridiculous fame. She didn't want to complain about being famous. But, "I don't see how anyone can prepare themselves for what stardom brings. It's a sticky thing." She is imprisoned by fame and yet, the most telling moment of the documentary, seduced by it. We saw her biting her nails, jiggling her leg, looking utterly blank and alone while people buzzed around fussing over her appearance. She was present but behind the "gates and walls" she's built. Then she took to the stage to receive an award and, literally, the switch went on and she became the public Britney, the one that smiles.
Which is the real Britney? Who knows. She probably doesn't and if she does, she's smart enough not to share. She's saving it for her mysterious book.
In the meantime, the most valuable thing about For the Record is that it serves as a warning for all those bright young things who think fame is a worthwhile ambition that the game might not be worth the candle.
