Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger: Fan-service rockumentary is very much the Gallagher brothers’ show

• Reviewed from the 2026 Venice Film Festival

“You have to care a lot to not give a fuck,” says Liam Gallagher in a new rockumentary which tracks their 2025 reunion/comeback tour. It is one of many surprisingly zen-like musings from the Oasis front man and singer. Oasis were the bad boys of the 1990s Britpop scene, northern lads who smoked, drank and flicked the Vs. They fought each other with tensions that played out onstage. Right before a gig in Paris in 2009, a backstage blow-up between Noel, the songwriter and guitarist, and Liam caused the band to split permanently and the brothers not to speak for 15 years.  

The film starts with rehearsals for the comeback, and the conflict is somewhat artificially cranked up as Liam belatedly arrives, sings his parts and then walks out while the band are still playing. Obviously, contracts have been signed, and tickets are going on sale, so the chances of a real explosion seem remote. The rest of the film plays out as a travelogue of the tour as the band plays their hits in Cardiff, Manchester, Dublin, Tokyo, Rio, Buenos Aires and the US.  

Directed by Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern, whose previous films include the LCD documentary Shut Up and Play the HIts (2012) and Meet Me in the Bathroom (2022), a chronicle of the turn-of-the-millennium indie music scene, they choose to concentrate less on the band members – who aren’t exactly performative performers – and more on the audience, and the effect the music is having on them. It begins hyperbolically. “When Oasis broke up it felt like my child had died,” one man rather madly insists, but as we are taken into the lives of various fans, it becomes clear that the Oasis demographic has evolved significantly and their music has transferred from one generation to the next. A pair of Japanese oyster divers, a woman who was injured in the Manchester stadium bombing in 2017, an Argentine football fan who changed the lyrics of Wonderwall to celebrate his team. The film does an excellent job of conveying the enthusiasm of the fans and the impact the band has had on the lives of many. One especially moving shot shows a young man being checked on by some older fans as he finds himself overwhelmed at the end of a concert. The lad has just had the night of his life and needs a minute.     

The filmmakers also have a great pair of commentators in the form of the Gallaghers. They’re sardonic and funny and on the whole have a newfound wisdom. Liam talks about how, getting older, you realise that you’re having the same conversation you’ve had a million times and it isn’t as mega as it once was. Noel, who once characterised Liam as someone who’d argue with his own toenails, is the most emotionally revealing. He discloses that their children now know each other and their relationship has improved dramatically.  

This is very much their show. Uncomfortable questions remain unasked (the whys and wherefores of the breakup, for instance). Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs, the guitarist who rejoined after leaving in 1999, is talked up and given fulsome praise but there’s no detail given about why he left and he’s not put in front of a microphone himself. The other musicians, both past and present, are barely mentioned at all. The only non-Gallagher musician to be given much time is Mani (Gary Mounfield) the bass player from the Stone Roses, whose passing is the occasion for a heartfelt tribute and proves an emotional highpoint of the film.    

As the tour takes on a triumphal air, it feels as if the film is participating in the lap of honour, as much as it is recording it. This is superior fan service and though it has a limited vocabulary in how to shoot concert footage – there are lots of waving arms and close-ups of Liam’s face – the music is powerful enough to make up for it. And it does have some life lessons, such as Liam’s irrefutable advice: “Don’t be a cunt and if you have to be a cunt at least be a funny cunt.” 

► Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger is in UK cinemas 11 September.