I think it takes a special type of person to not like Dolly Parton in at least some capacity. There are two things she could be pulling off here: Either she is one of the most talented song-writers as well as one of the most genuinely kind people of all time, or she has a fantastic master-plan on how to fake it all of these years.
Dolly has been around for more than 50 years and Here I am (which is also a name of a hit song of hers) is basically a recounting of her entire career.
The show begins with current day Dolly talking to an interviewer and seeing how she is preparing for her 50th anniversary show at the Grand Ol' Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. This is where Dolly got her shot to impress the masses as an 18 year old and impress them she did. This tiny blonde girl entered an industry that was dominated by men and the people immediately enjoyed her spunky attitude, and her country-western almost angelic voice.
The documentary then goes on, through the words of multiple people that she has worked with and known throughout her life, how her career progressed from working under the wing of existing stars, to rising "in the ranks" to the point where she refused to sell the rights to "I Will Always Love You" to Elvis at a time when nobody ever said no to Elvis.
For people familiar with her music, it is really interesting to see the story behind the songs and even if you are not a fan, I bet there are a few songs that you may not have even known are Dolly originals.
I've always had a soft spot for Dolly, and I don't know about any dirt on her because I don't think she has actually had any sort of scandal in her life at any point. If she did, it was buried extremely well. She has touched the lives of so many people growing up and is actually the head of multiple charities focused mostly on helping poor children.
She's a bit older now, but can still hit all the notes in the same (if not better) fashion that she did back when the songs were first penned.
Now here's the little bit of a bad part. Because there isn't always going to be some sort of dramatic story behind each hit song, some of the descriptions drag one for a while and there are a couple of "experts" that chime in on everything that try to turn Dolly into some sort of figurehead for feminism that Dolly never actually condoned. Dolly has spent her entire career distancing herself from movements and politics and dodges any questions about such topics in all interviews that she has even been involved in. Yet these "experts" try to interject her into those roles on a regular basis and it is just "face-palm" annoying to hear it. This is Netflix though, so an agenda is expected... gotta get some brainwashing in at all costs.
Overall, i think that this Netflix special (which originally aired elsewhere) is part of a Dolly push that is going on at the moment especially since Dolly also has a series right now called "Heartstrings" which is decent.
Mostly i think this documentary is worth watching, but with the remote in hand to skip a great deal of the political commentary that has nothing to do with the songs themselves.
