‘Thank You, Goodnight’: A (Very Long) Reminder That Even Jon Bon Jovi Is Mortal

Disney/Hulu

“We’re halfway there,” I said to myself at the two-and-a-half-hour mark of Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, a four-part early Christmas gift to hard-core Bon Jovi fans and a ludicrously detailed look at the pop-rock luminary’s career for everyone else.

Like the anthemic songs the platinum-selling New Jersey-born singer is known for, it would take an extra step to actively dislike this very by-the-numbers Hulu documentary, but the excessive length and the overblown manner in which it tries to manufacture drama does get a bit irritating. Put bluntly, there just isn’t much going on in this sanctioned and manicured portrait, yet it still goes on forever.

Bon Jovi at the Bryce Jordan Center in State College, Pennsylvania in 2013.

David Bergman/Courtesy of Hulu

Jon Bon Jovi is, was, and always shall be an extremely handsome and charismatic fella. That smile! Those eyes! Even in the deepest archive footage, striking a pose in preposterous ’80s hair-band outfits, the guy still looked good. What’s more, you can tell, you can just tell, that he’s a nice guy. Have you ever heard anyone say anything nasty about Jon Bon Jovi? Think a minute. No. The answer is no.

He’s been married for 35 years to a gal he’s known since high school. He became one of the biggest stars in music with his band’s third album, Slippery When Wet, in 1986. And while the more recent stuff hasn’t dominated the charts in the same way, he’s continued to sell out arenas all over the world and hasn’t been out of the public eye since. A Bon Jovi song on the radio is like a side of fries with a meal: not necessary, but always welcome.

The most interesting chapter in the documentary focuses, as is frequently the case, on the early years. Much is made in Thank You, Goodnight about what a hard-working, salt-of-the-earth guy he is, and this is in keeping with the Jersey acts that came before him, like Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes and, of course, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Quite frankly, I believe it to be true. But the film can’t hide the fact that Bon Jovi (née Bongiovi before a record exec wisely suggested he follow Van Halen’s naming structure) was second cousins with the producer Tony Bongiovi, who ran the Power Station studio in New York City where a young Jon had a first job. He was gigging his brains out in the clubs of Asbury Park, but he was also hanging out with Steven Tyler of Aerosmith and watching David Bowie and Queen record “Under Pressure.” On off-hours he got to play around in the studio and record his first track, “Runaway.”

“Runaway” found radio airplay and eventually got Jon a record deal. From there he set up his band—a perfect Jersey blend of Italian Americans, Jews, and Hispanics—simply named Bon Jovi. Many, like future Tony winner David Bryan, were already in his orbit, but he recruited others, like the significantly older drummer Tico Torres (who speaks with such blunt Jersey wisdom in this documentary he ought to host Learning Annex sessions) and the eventual Keith to his Mick, guitarist and co-songwriter Richie Sambora.

Their first two albums did OK, but they kept at it, hired a ringer (Desmond Child) to help co-write some tunes, then hit pay dirt just as MTV became arbiters of the monoculture. “You Give Love a Bad Name,” “Livin’ on a Prayer,” and “Wanted Dead or Alive” were the anthems American society needed in 1986, and they followed it up two years later with “Bad Medicine” and “I’ll Be There For You.” As a representative not just of Gen X but also New Jersey—and one whose older sister had her hormones laser-targeted on this group—there was nothing in the world bigger than Bon Jovi at the time.

Bon Jovi in concert at the Phillips Arena in Atlanta, Georgia in 2010.

David Bergman/Courtesy of Hulu

If you’ve paid any attention to the personnel changes of Bon Jovi over the decades (and no shame if you haven’t—you can still call yourself a fan if you only sing along when their songs come on at CVS), you know that at a certain point Jon and Richie parted ways. The band plays on, though, and has a new album coming out just in time for this documentary.

Director Gotham Chopra (son of Deepak Chopra) squeezes as much as he can from this schism but fails to find its root or bang out a conclusion. (This is a far cry from Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.) When Sambora makes his first appearance in a current talking-head interview at the end of episode one, he puffs out his chest and asks, “So are we telling the truth here?” The movie ultimately whiffs on this test, I feel.

The other dramatic arc is Jon’s decision to get vocal-cord surgery. He’s a perfectionist, and he knows that his recent shows have been “100 percent of 80 percent.” I do not want to belittle anyone undergoing major surgery, but Thank You, Goodnight drags this decision out like it’s Hamlet. Jon Bon Jovi is facing 60, and this is a reminder that he’s mortal, but the guy still looks like a dream. He’s loaded, he’s got a loving wife, and a zillion gold records on his shelf. If he had to retire, is it really the end of the world? We can always see Def Leppard this summer instead.

Bon Jovi from the Live 2011 Tour at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut.

David Bergman/Courtesy of Hulu

What’s most strange about this film is how devoted it is to the minutiae of Jon’s work (a whole chapter on forming his own management company! What am I, his accountant?) but there’s so little about anyone’s personal life. He’s got kids, but they aren’t in the movie. Richie Sambora was married to Heather Locklear, but that’s not mentioned at all. Jon has always been famously drug-free, but the rest of the band wasn’t. There are zero tales of debauchery from the road. Did Jon screw around with groupies before he got married in 1989? You’ll never know from this film. It’s also a miss that there isn’t more footage of the early fans. The Jersey girls of the mid-’80s were like nothing else ever seen, and we only get a glimpse.

But you will know about the time in Mexico that student unrest forced them to perform two shows in one day—this is detailed in two different episodes, to show just how crazy life is on the road, and how hard they toiled. Jon, I love ya, but some people work in uranium mines! You had to sing about the loaded six string on your back at a doubleheader. You’ll live!

OK, clearly I am only a middling Bon Jovi fan. For some, this will all be catnip. But for a group who made it big on radio hits under five minutes, you’d think they’d know how to cut the fat.