'Amy' celebrates the short life of Amy Winehouse

<h3 class="briefHead">Mini-review: 'Amy'</h3>

Asif Kapadia's remarkably insightful, emotionally draining documentary "Amy" chronicles much more than the brief life and untimely death of British soul and jazz singer Amy Winehouse, who died of alcohol poisoning at the age of 27 in 2011.

Kapadia's doc has been praised for depicting the conflicted relationship between celebrity and art. That's true, but I see the movie also as an indictment of the massive failure of the singer's social and personal support systems to protect and nurture her as she began an obvious descent into self-destruction.

For the most part, weak friends, star-struck fans, inadequate parents - especially opportunist Dad - a drug-addicted husband, a predatory press, profit-minded promoters and an unempathetic public seemed to quietly conspire to do nothing about the singer's self-destruction. Essentially, they all became her enablers.

"Amy" marks the first doc I've seen where seemingly every important part of the subject's life has been captured in revealing video clips from omnipresent cellphones, handicams and cameras.

"Amy" begins with home movies of her singing with friends, then documents her rise to become a decidedly un-fabricated music superstar with a sassy, funny demeanor and a voice like melting chocolate.

The movie breezes through her relationships with producers (only one of whom actually seemed to care about her), her divorced parents and her bad-bad-boy lover Blake Fielder, whose love of drugs exceeded that for Amy. At least he inspired some of the songs on her popular "Back to Black" album.

During the songs, Kapadia provides us with subtitles so we can read the lyrics as they come out of Amy's liltingly tortured delivery. This does help to see the sheer poetry of the singer's highly personal lyrics, but on another level, feels intrusive and distracting.

"Amy" offers no shocking revelations or critical evaluations of the singer, her life and music. It's mostly a celebratory work, laced with the acidic realization that nobody wanted to be a speed bump on the singer's road to self-demise.

In the end, Winehouse became the very thing in death she avoided in her art, a cliché: the troubled, tragic, self-destructive artist taken from us far too soon.

<b>"Amy" opens at local theaters. Rated R for drug use, language. 90 minutes.</b> ★ ★ ★ ½