It should be duly mentioned that I have a very deep respect for the intentions of this film. Africa needs to get out of the gutter and start cooperating with each other, and stop thinking that they are helpless and need western support. It is a perfectly relevant message, and the film gets it across pretty well...I just didn't like the movie.
As a film, it cannot seem to decide what it is. It attempts to be a tribute to Bob Marley. It attempts to document how important Ethiopia is for the Rastafarian faith. It nobly tries to be a humanitarian doc worthy of a social studies class in trying to portray very U.N., very P.C. ideas towards the ultimate benefits of the unification of Africa. But unfortunately, it doesn't really deliver fully on any of these fronts, making it difficult to really respect the film. There are some powerful ideas present, and some very cool ideas put forth by the students shown for only about half of the film. But the fact that the students are really only present and shown in half of the film really demonstrates how indecisive the movie really is; it needs to at least stick with a topic long enough to make the viewer care about it if they are not already a bleeding-heart African activist.
The film does have a lot of interests to keep in mind: it needs to please the people who will buy the film simply for the fact that it has Bob Marley footage, it needs to please humanitarian activists in presenting it's "Africa Unite" ideas, and it needs to provide at least basic information on the Rasta religion that every idea in the film is so deeply rooted in. The film achieves its greatest successes when chronicling the history and importance of the Rastafarian religion in showing a 70 year-old Jamaican man and his pilgrimage to Ethiopia to see the concert. This man, a strong looking old man with long, gray, fuzzy dreadlocks, gets the most sympathy and important screen time of anyone exemplified in the entire movie. It is especially touching when he comes to the church of his religion, and cries whilst reciting a psalm that they say back in Jamaica.
As for the actual film-making, it is an extremely sloppy movie. For some reason, director Stephanie Black feels the need to use some sort of slow-shutter or slow-motion on the camera for about 50% of the film. It is almost agonizingly frustrating, since it doesn't even heighten the "cool" effect of ANY of the sequences, it just makes the film look like a crappy home movie. Also, many of the discussions and debates between the young kids are cut very short, not providing enough time to really see the insight and passion that is so clearly present in each and every one of them. Even the interviews with Damien and Ziggy are cut tragically short, and you really don't see much of them personally throughout the movie--most of their screen time is just in their musical performances.
The presence of the very graceful Danny Glover is welcomed in a few infuriatingly short scenes; however, I do realize that his overall presence would take a lot away from the film as a whole. The musical performances are outstanding, even if you're not a huge fan of reggae music, but even they are cut short at the worst times, making the movie very hard to actually get into, since you feel as though it would be so much more interesting just to watch the concert footage.
In summation, I would like to mention the one scene in the film that I found to be quite beautiful and very memorable, and it comes towards the end. It consists of black-and-white archival footage of Bob Marley sitting on a rock in some seemingly remote spring, with various shots of a small cascading waterfall. Bob seems to just be reflecting, taking the world in, and then smiles and runs over to the camera. Narration about his legacy is played the entire time, as Bob sits on a rock and (FINALLY) is shown smoking a joint. It is a potent, evocative sequence, the one scene in the film that I found to truly demonstrate his undying legacy. Too bad most of the film was squeamish and uninteresting.