Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Shawn Peter Raul Mendes is 22 years old. He’s worth over $54 million, according to Forbes magazine. He has 57 million followers on Instagram, another 26 million on Twitter. He’s graced magazine covers and ad campaigns as a model and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity. He’s done a lot for such a young man, but Mendes is still very much a boy at heart. At least that was my takeaway from Shawn Mendes: In Wonder, the new documentary which premiered this week on Netflix.
Directed by music video veteran Grant Singer, In Wonder arrives two weeks ahead of Mendes’ new album, Wonder. However, rather than being a “making of” documentary, the film finds the singer in the middle of a grueling 106 date world tour and stealing time for writing sessions, recording sessions, awards shows and the occasional visit with his loved ones. “The next 10 years are when everything I do is going full speed. It’s like an athlete in their prime. I have to keep going,” he says at one point, or types, I should say, having completely lost his voice during the last leg of the tour in South America.
At times, Mendes is grimly serious. From a young age he said, “I want to be a singer. I want to be an artist,” and found encouragement from family and friends. He has big ears (metaphorically, not literally) and analyzes Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons’ “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You,” how both the lyrics and arrangement make it sound like an “overdose of love,” an approach he wants to emulate. As a boy he kept a manifestation journal, writing down his goals and desires over and over on a single sheet of paper, like Jack Nicholson after he goes insane in The Shining. He keeps adding songs to his live show until his voice reaches its breaking point. He cries to his mother on a phone call in an empty football stadium after cancelling a show in Brazil due to laryngitis.
Despite the fame and fortune, the legions of adoring fans, and the celebrity girlfriend, Mendes seems like any other guy caught between youth and adulthood. He brings his best friend on tour with him to bust balls and keep him real. Back home in Toronto, he picks his younger sister up at high school and goes running around the soccer field where he played as a boy. He shows off his parent’s house with pride, like a college freshman bringing his roommate home for Thanksgiving. He marvels at how small his bedroom was (it’s really not that small) and how good the pillows smell.
The ebullient naïveté of young love oozes out of Mendes’ songs like a tube of toothpaste with the cap off. His relationship with fellow pop star Camila Cabello has been scrutinized and accused of being a publicity stunt but seems real enough on camera. They share much in common, having both grown up in public after finding fame as teens. Filmed around the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards, the couple share an apartment in New York City’s West Village. Mendes swoons describing their domestic bliss, “making eggs and trying to figure out how to use a Keurig, normal things. This is really cool, to just be like a 21 year old guy and getting older, that’s happening for me too!”
On tour, Mendes plays to crowds in the tens of thousands. Backstage he seems an enthusiastic and encouraging bandleader and commands the room once the show starts, leading sing-alongs and other acts of audience participation. Throngs of fans gather outside his hotel and fall to pieces when they meet him. Though he often seems focused on the task at hand, he also basks in the wonder of it all. Before a show to over 50,000 at Toronto’s Rogers Centre he wanders around the empty stadium as if he snuck in, waiting for a security guard to kick him out. Then he complains that the stage is too small.
Perhaps it’s all a calculated piece of promotional myth making, but Shawn Mendes: In Wonder effectively casts the singer as both superstar and boy next door. Despite his professionalism and sense of purpose, he appears amazed that his youthful dreams have become reality. More than just being a music documentary or opportunity to push an artist’s new album, In Wonder is an engaging and convincing portrait of a young man straddling his past and future and milking the present for all its worth.
Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.
