User Reviews

"The Prodigy: Smack My Bitch Up" tells you the name of the English band performing and the song you are about to hear in this 4.5-minute music video. It's from 1997, so already over 20 years old and this one was directed by somewhat legendary music video director Jonas Åkerlund from Sweden and works like this are the reason why he is so well-known still today. What can I say, I lo´ved this one back then and I still do today. You don't need a great deal of lyrics to come up with something creative here and the music video is at least as good as the song. Sure you don't need to be a party-goer like the character we follow in first-person perspective in order to appreciate the art, style and overall creativity in here. It is all just as good as the ending when you think that's it and then a major plot twist happens with the mirror scene that urges you you to watch it all again from a really new perspective. Having porn actresses in here doesn't hurt either as May was probably just right for the part. That's all I guess. What an amazing year 1997 was for music (videos). Today's artists and generation can only dream of quality in that quantity. My favorite from The Prodigy and this one's really prodigious. You don't wanna miss it. Not many better ways to spend five minutes.

It's fleetingly rare that a music video sufficiently catches my eye to warrant a few words of praise. Twenty-four years later, Jonas Akerlund's work for The Prodigy remains a great music video. More than that, it's a superb short film, and a phenomenal example of how a still novel approach to film-making can be effective.

The music imparts considerable energy and a sense of gleeful, reckless abandon to the film. The narrative is small and simple, but riveting in its own right, as the protagonist engages in all manner of vice and debauchery. Upon premiere in 1997, the video set the mainstream music world on fire with immediate network censorship for its depiction over only five minutes of more R-rated content than many full-length features. Imaginative editing perfectly aligns key beats in the video with particular moments in The Prodigy's song, culminating in an electrifying experience. Sparing use of minor visual effects create the impression of a mind-bending haze appropriate to the course of events.

That leads directly into the most singularly prominent element: That the feature is filmed entirely from the first-person perspective. True, many full-length features have used such camerawork, but in the vast majority of instances it's for a specific sequence, or to briefly visualize an alternative point of view. The advent of GoPro cameras has enabled enterprising film-makers to expand their range of possibilities. Yet Akerlund's video is even still perhaps the best example of a dynamic professional feature, of whatever length, filmed with the camera strapped to an actor. The nearest comparison is the 2015 action flick 'Hardcore Henry,' yet that suffered from such stilted, choppy action sequences that it pales next to the fluidity, naturalness, and flippant thrills seen here.

And to cap it all off, the video ends with a fleeting moment of deliberate provocation. The final shot upends expectations, defies censors - and in 1997, flung mud in the eye of reactionaries at a time when even the mere suggestion of LGBTQ themes was considered inherently explicit and immediately blacklisted. As Prodigy mainstay Liam Howlett himself has remarked, the group's whole intent with the concept of the video was to ruffle feathers. They definitely succeeded.

Attitudes in society have gradually shifted, and some of the content in Akerlund's video isn't as instantly, subjectively goading as it was upon release. Yet it remains an imaginative achievement of film-making, meshed in fine synchrony with The Prodigy's charged music. It would still be noteworthy for the taunt it posed to an unprepared world all those years ago even if it didn't hold up - but it certainly does. While a content warning is appropriate, these are five minutes well worth our time.