“Not recommended for viewers prone to epilepsy, this stroboscopic documentary celebrates the variegated career of recording artist/arranger and film composer Quincy Jones.

Sort of an oral history on film, the entire narrative unfolds in a punchy collage of interview snippets offered by Jones and his illustrious contemporaries. Often several points of view come out at once, backed by stock footage. Jones was born in Chicago and grew up in rough neighborhoods, his childhood marred by crime and a mother committed to a mental institution while his father remarried. From age 12, Quincy determined to be a musician, once stowing away in Lionel Hampton's tour bus. But the boy ended up getting a proper education, then entered the New York jazz scene. Jones recalls when he and his troupe, looking like fools in Tyrolean hats and costumes for a gig, wandered into a gathering of legends like Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and Thelonious Monk, who couldn't have thought much of the newcomer. Touring the Carolinas with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Jones saw American racism firsthand ("We always had a white driver; that's the only way we could eat," says Dizzy). In a subsequent overseas tour, however, Jones thrived in the color-blind societies of Europe (even though audiences didn't always seem to understand the point of modern jazz). Under Jones's management, however, the group went bankrupt…

… When Jones describes cranial surgery in which his head was opened "like an egg," one better understands LISTEN UP's kaleidoscope approach. The neurologically damaged Jones just isn't the most coherent narrator, and director Weissbrod must defer to a celebrity lineup of colleagues, splicing a syncopated symphony of superstar sound bites. Nearly everyone is photographed by Stephen Kazmierski in dramatic chiaroscuro darkness worthy of a magazine layout (Michael Jackson, at the point in his own career when weirdness was subverting a wholesome public image, wants the lights extinguished altogether), and LISTEN UP certainly has the visual dynamism of a music video…

…"Quincy is a spray gun of love"--thank Steven Spielberg for that last one) this part of the picture most resembles a documentary riff on Bob Fosse's acid self-portrait ALL THAT JAZZ, and that's meant as serious praise. LISTEN UP may itself resemble a spray gun, but it resists whitewashing a complex man.” TV GUIDE