It's tempting to dismiss "Deep Sea Blues," the latest music documentary by vet helmer Robert Mugge (“Gospel According to Al Green”) as a slick infomercial for the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruises, weeklong cruise ship jaunts organized by Roger Naber (the doc's executive producer). But it's difficult to deny the appeal of spirited performances by Bobby Rush, Deanna Bogart, Buckwheat Zydeco, Lil' Ed & the Blues Imperials and other luminaries who light up the pic. After dropping anchor at some fest circuit ports, "Deep Sea Blues" should make a respectable splash as homevid and cable fare.

Predictably, Mugge includes enthusiastic testimonials from passengers -- many of them repeat customers -- and entertainers on the Caribbean cruise captured in the doc. But the sailing is smoother, and the good times roll easier, during such musical highlights as Tab Benoit's Cajun-flavored "We Make A Good Gumbo," Rush and Bogart's playfully naughty duet on "Ride My Automobile," and Earl Thomas' straight-from-the-soul "Maybe in the Next Life."

- Joe Leydon, Variety
 

No one films musical performance so well as Robert Mugge. He’s made films about Al Green, Robert Johnson, Ruben Blades, Sun Ra and genuine Hawaiian Hula. Mugge is particularly good at finding and celebrating great but not necessarily well-known musicians, and his movies present magnificent unpretentious, rough-edged surprises. Mugge also shows the context for performance, so you never get music disconnected from where it’s done. “Deep Sea Blues” overflows with unexpected contradictions. It takes place on one of those immense ships that cruise people around the Caribbean. Rowdy blues men and women carouse with the ocean behind them, the monster cruise ship surrounding them, and a most unlikely-looking audience. There’s not a juke joint in sight, no bayous, no little kids playing in the red dirt. But the setting makes the music particularly rich. You can see how the tradition of the blues persists. Instead of a crowded rural Mississippi bar, tourists in swimming pools bounce to the rhythm. “Deep Sea Blues” makes you see that even this audience...finds the blues irresistible.

- Howie Movshovitz, Colorado Public Radio
 

Forget ice sculptures, midnight buffets and karaoke contests.

Leave it to Robert Mugge to find authentic blues music on a luxury cruise ship.

Mugge is among the most successful music filmmakers working today and he could probably film Cajun rhythms on a used-car lot if he set his mind to it.

“For years, I’ve been trying to make films about music and performances in the communities they came out of, against the landscapes that gave birth to the music, showing the music being played for its originally intended audience,” Mugge said. “Yet here, we had to go 1,000 miles out to sea to create a situation where musicians and fans could freely interact.”

“Deep Sea Blues,” which debuts at the 30th Starz Denver Film Festival this month, documents life on board the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise. Every year, the Caribbean-bound vessel is fueled by live blues, R&B, Creole and even a smidgen of honky-tonk country.

To hear Mugge tell it, when the juke joints went extinct, blues and other southern-born roots music forms were forced to seek out new habitat. For many musicians, music cruises have become a liveable and even lucrative environment, given today’s aging music audiences.

Among the artists who appear in “Deep Sea Blues” are Taj Mahal, Buckwheat Zydeco, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Tab Benoit, and Commander Cody.

Cody is not exactly a blues artist, but a cruise ship isn’t a back-country roadhouse, either.

In any case, the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise is more than a concert on the high seas. Off stage... whether they like it or not, and most like it... the artists mingle, eat, swim and socialize with their fans in a way Mugge says is reminiscent of the old “chitlin’ circuit,” where musicians and their audience were often linked by their shared role as outcasts.

In this case, though, it’s a shared role as pleasure cruisers.

It’s an atmosphere not conducive to the standard-issue moody and distant musician, or the moody and distant audience member, a fact that has prompted the cruise to be careful about what musicians get booked.

Socially friendly nightowls, in. Seasick prima donnas, out.

The blues cruise is an extended family, in which some cruisers will chip in to help a down-on-his-luck cruiser buy a ticket. Deep Sea Blues even includes scenes from a recent blues cruise wedding.

“I’ve been saying for years that the best music films are about more than just music,” Mugge said. “How musicians interact with their audience has always been very important to me, and certainly with this film, that’s really key.”

- Peter Jones, Life on Capitol Hill (Denver)
 

The top three films I saw at this year’s Starz Film Festival were all documentaries... (top choice) “Deep Sea Blues” chronicles the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise to the Caribbean, an absolutely amazing blues festival at sea with some of the biggest names in the genre. Mugge uses an 80 percent music/20 percent narrative formula for the doc, and movie-goers leave the theater feeling like they’ve seen a larger-than-life blues show. Sofa king cool.

- Matthew Colella, The Bridge (Denver)