Leigh Brooks’ Hate to Love: Nickelback is nothing spectacular. Following the mode of many music documentaries, the film follows Canadian pop-rockers Nickelback’s rise to fame and then cultural infamy, as the band became one everyone loved to hate. But in the process of biographing the band, Brooks conveys something truly unique and endearing. Brooks presents the image of Nickelback as a group of relatively unproblematic, kind, and unapologetically Canadian guys who love what they do and, in Brooks’ lens, were undeserving of the cruelty heaped on them in the past few years.
Through intimate and honest interviews with the band members — lead vocalist and icon Chad Kroeger, bassist Mike Kroeger, rhythm guitarist Ryan Peake, and drummer Daniel Adair — Brooks charts Nickelback’s early days and the work they put in to achieve fame. We see a band with very humble origins doggedly pursuing a dream and achieving it to massive success, and then massive dislike. Brooks expertly interviews the bandmates about their highs and lows, covering with sympathy Mike’s and Adair’s health troubles, and Chad’s hurt when the band inexplicably became an internet meme.
Brooks does a good job of depicting the near snobbery that undergirded much of the vitriol hurled Nickelback’s way. We see that while they were beloved in the early aughts, the culture quickly turned against them when certain critics categorized their music as being “bad” for the sole reason that it was popular. What happened to the band happens often to stars when they become too well liked — they are seen as sellouts, or considered as making bad art for the simple reason that if it appeals to the masses, it must not be complex enough or intelligent enough.
While Brooks does cover the hate that Nickelback receives, he doesn’t do so with much incisiveness. That is, cultural reasons behind the hate the band received aren’t explored with any critical acumen — Brooks leaves one wanting a more thorough investigation into why and how Nickelback became the band everyone loves to hate, not simply that it was such a band. For example, while a talking head does mention critics’ snobbery in writing the band off, we don’t get a clear understanding of the dialectic of this snobbery, the contours of the culture that produced it. The film doesn’t examine the trajectory or recursion that alternative music was taking at the time when the tides turned against Nickelback: we don’t get a clear image of what was happening culturally and ideologically in how music was being produced and consumed, and the effect this had on the curious allegiance of a kind of sparsity in production with critical success. In other words, this doc is a biopic of the band, as opposed to a crucial cultural study, as the title might suggest.
Still, the film remains informational and entertaining. As Brooks compellingly explores Nickelback’s lore, fact, and cultural reputation, something curious happens in this film, because for most of it, you’re waiting for the ball to drop. Many music documentaries whose form Hate to Love follows work toward revealing the oftentimes shocking or tragic lives of musicians who history has a tumultuous relationship with. But here, what is revealed (a band of dudes that just wants to keep on making music for fans) is a breath of fresh air.
This is not to say it doesn’t soberly reveal the tough times. Brooks carefully considers Chad’s relationship with drinking and partying, but this is done so respectfully, because it’s not something that the band feel is a negative. We also how Mike and Adair bounce back from health issues that might have greatly impacted their ability to play music, to continue on with the band. The various serious issues raised when painting each of the members’ personalities, their anxieties, and troubles, are shared with trust and kindness, and this honesty allows us a greater and more fulsome image of who Nickelback, as a band, is. Insofar as the film— the documentary treatment — is a first for this band, it presents us with a group of men we should hope to talk about for a while yet.
Hate to Love is intimate and tender, celebrates the band for their love for music, and rightfully so. Every member of the band, Chad especially, is allowed to show their personality, to speak about how they felt in the face of the hurtful memes and strange ridicule hurled their way, and in this process, Brooks allows the members to reveal their charm, endear any critic to their side, and hopefully make it okay to culturally express one’s love for Nickelback proudly and loudly.
