The first of Cher’s early '70s trifecta number one “dark trilogy,” “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves” sums up immemorial bad press perpetuated in legend, literature, fairy tale, song and celluloid. Jasmine Dellal’s Gypsy Caravan offers one of the few attempts at correcting such negative information since the nineteenth century writings of traveler George Burrow. Heartfelt and familiarly upbeat, it avoids the stridency of other recent cause-concert celebrations like Screamers yet still does not succeed as the engrossing work that might have been.

Subtitle “When the Road Bends . . .” all that remains of an original longer main title from a Gypsy proverb about adversity -- cut further to just “Caravan” by Johnny Depp, the sole onscreen celebrity head -- the film gets around the usual narrative pleading and library footage in letting music and makers speak for themselves. There is no facile bringing in of Django Reinhardt’s difficulties with “critics antagonistic toward this gypsy with a song in his soul,” and it is only the performers themselves who offhandedly refer to their own Nazi genocide and mass burials “in the same hole with Jews,” to flamenco’s origins among the Romany -- the preferred term -- or to an American’s hurtful comment to “Please, God, save me from Gypsies!”

This chronicle of the joint six-week U.S.-Canada tour by five groups -- from Macedonia, Romania, India and Spain and previously not acquainted with each other -- is to an extent about the participants coming to realize “the common strain” among them. Too liberally padded with Coach USA bus scenes of them all becoming easier with one another, and even more with passages of home villages, families, neighbors and functions, the result becomes repetitious, confuses us as to who's who, and would have been better if aimed in fewer directions.

Thus neither fully rockumentary variant nor social commentary, the film must finally slight some of its many aspects and individuals in favor of others. Unlike the members of the Buena Vista Social Club, in this first (for some) exposure to wider frontiers and audiences, some musicians come across as understandably harping on “God’s greatest gift, money,” even though proceeds may be used to educate, to support extensive families, or to bring electricity and roads to entire hamlets.

There is, of course, no reason cash should not be a motivation, and in certain cases, those featured are getting a first whiff of real green. Some more rounded out than others, they are appealing, their joy in music apparent -- although there is never the impression of their being candid-camera “offstage.” 

Overall reaction here depends on the common thread of music, on North American stages and in European and Asian villages. Unfortunately, and again the result of trying to include too many aspects, performances are seldom given in their entirety. Despite a few unconvincing audience shots, no musical momentum is built up in the snippets, as one begins to wish that location-fixing interstate signs and printed titles indicating weeks one to six, would flash by more quickly.

The 21-track CD (of the screen version’s 41 full or partial numbers) to go on sale three days prior to theatrical release, the film showcases pieces of a rainbow of musical heritage, some of which leave one wishing for more, like the ragas. On the other hand, this non-professional ear was, for example, less than taken with long minutes of frantic fiddling and heavy horns calling up Mediterranean weddings or bar mitzvahs, even to a “Hora de Mariage.”

There is material to discover about Gypsies, their culture and their music in this laudable attempt, but its 111 minutes prove long, repetitious, and not selectively enough edited for Gypsy Caravan to be more than an ordinary film of the type.

(Released by Shadow Distribution; not rated by MPAA.)