Girl You Know It's True

As much of an interrogation of pop culture as the infamous lip-synching duo, this surprisingly illuminating biopic shows how fickle we are in who we laud or disparage.

No fibbing: I was not expecting much out of “Girl You Know It’s True.”

This biopic focuses on the short-lived pop supergroup Milli Vanilli, who were revealed to be merely lip-synching the songs that made them international stars. After bursting onto the scene, even winning the 1990 Grammy for Best New Artist, they disappeared as fast as they showed up — fodder for late-night television punchlines and then dismissal into the ash heap of pop culture misfires.

Personally, back in the day I found the pair of Rob Pilatus and Fab Morgan ridiculous even before their downfall. Their music was synth-heavy mashups of pop, R&B and even rap, as much a soulless pastiche of styles as their look, which was bizarre even then: two good-looking Black dudes in waist-long (and obviously fake) cornrows, spandex tights and vaguely martial jackets of bright neon hues.

They looked like Gay Michael Jackson in Rasta Boot Camp.

So I was surprised at the insight, humor and genuine human warmth of “Girl,” written and directed by German-Austrian filmmaker Simon Verhoeven. It casts a sympathetic eye on Rob and Fab as young, naive pawns of a music industry that cares far more about hits than artistry.

In a way, theirs is a cautionary tale about the logical outcome of a long slide that was already happening before they were born. Think about the Monkees, losing stature because they didn’t play their own musical instruments in their studio recordings; to Auto-Tune turning mediocre voices into passably robotic ones; to the commonplace practice of “backing” vocals for live performances — aka the singers hold dead mikes while their recorded voices are blared out through speakers.

Was it really that big a leap on the fraud scale for those voices to come out of the mouths of somebody besides the hot dudes prancing on the stage in front of us?

The film is as much an interrogation of us, the consumers of pop culture, as the people serving up the fakery. We’re a fickle lot, eager to heap fame and money on those giving us what we want, but quick to turn to disparagement when the ruse is revealed.

Are we truly mad at them, for perpetrating the deceit, or at ourselves for being such easy marks?

“Girl” is playing in a limited theatrical run, but in most parts of the country you’ll have to rent it via video on demand on all the usual platforms.

The casting is terrific, Elan Ben Ali as Fab and Tijan Njie as Rob. Especially when done up in the Milli Vanilli outfits, they’re a strong physical match — Elan could even be Fab’s twin. They also do solid French and German accents, respectively, for their characters.

They’re depicted as eager sons of adoptive European families, dancers and showmen who revel in their status as the novelty dark-skinned hunks in their lily-white societies. They’re thrown together doing some low-end shoots as background dancers, with vague dreams of becoming a recording duo without worrying to much about the singing portion.

In one funny-because-it’s-true bit, the boys realize the big stars of song and screen have one thing in common: standout hairdos like Elvis or Marilyn Monroe. They adopt their cornrow extensions, along with some black leather togs, and immediately make a splash in the German nightclubs.

This gets them noticed by Ingrid Segieth (Bella Dayne), the girlfriend of music producer Frank Farian, played by Matthias Schweighöfer (memorable from the zombie flick “Army of the Dead”). Frank has a big group in Boney M, but is bothered by never having had a hit song in the States. He signs up Rob and Fav to play some gigs as frontmen for a single he’s already recorded, a cover of an obscure American group’s song.

Taking its moniker from Ingrid’s nickname, Milli, the idea is the group will later record more songs with the guys’ real voices. But they enjoy such quick, immediate success, that part keeps getting shunted until later. Then it becomes a game of covering up their secret.

Rob and Fav soon move to Los Angeles under the controlling arm of smarmy Arista Records executives, creating tension with Frank and Ingrid back in Germany as they work on finishing their first album.

The boys arrive as innocents — positively bewildered by things like groupies and cocaine — who are soon corrupted by the L.A. scene, morphing into arrogant drug users and philanderers. A running backstory is Rob’s struggle to gain the favor of his adoptive German parents, while Fav is intrigued by the possibility of finally meeting his real birth father.

The story is told with Rob, Fav and Frank trading roles as the narrator as they look back on their story from their own perspectives. A bit of a challenge because, of course, Rob is dead, famously dying of an overdose after years of obscurity and depression post-fall, including periods of homelessness.

Rather than making things awkward, it’s an opportunity for the movie to be self-reflexive, commenting upon the storytelling as it’s happening, “Sunset Boulvard”-style.

One thing that shines through is Rob and Fav’s deep and true friendship, always referring to each other as brothers rather than just bandmates. Rob is the more outgoing of the pair, garnering the most attention for his cut abs and green eyes, while Fav is the one with perhaps his head on straighter and his heart in the right place.

I liked that the movie gives props to Brad Howell and John Davis, the two guys who actually sung all the songs that climbed the Billboard charts. But they were also older, ordinary-looking guys who knew their place as session players.

The most telling moment in the film is Frank narrating as they created the songs in-studio, with even himself as a background singer and a group of other dorky white guy musicians behind them. Frank looks into the camera and asks the hard question:

“Would you have bought our T-shirt? Screamed our names? Drooled over our hot moves?”

I think we all know the answer.

The truth is Milli Vanilli became a sensation because of how they looked and danced, the stage presentation the sizzle that sold the steak grilled by somebody else. Since the very advent of moving pictures, the success of musical groups has depended just as much, if not more, on comeliness as musicality. Let’s put it this way: if Frank Sinatra looked like he did at the end of his career when he started it, nobody would’ve ever heard of Ol’ Blue Eyes.

“Girl You Know It’s True” shows us that Rob Pilatus and Fab Morgan were just like any of millions of other young people who dream of becoming stars: willing to do whatever it takes and accept whatever help tossed their way, even if it represents a shortcut. Who, in any kind of career, turns down a hand up to the top floor?

It’s only after you arrive you realize the climb is what prepares you to belong there.