SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN (PG-13) Ask any working musician (or look in the mirror) about the pitfalls of hitting it big and you'll hear a litany of hardship. The odds of "making it" are heavily against you. That's not cynicism talking. Just the facts, man. Now, imagine you do land a big record deal and get the opportunity to have your music listened to by audiences everywhere. You wouldn't be accused of daydreaming at that point. You're clearly on the path to success. Back in the late 1960s, an up-and-coming folk singer named Rodriguez was primed for success with his politically aware yet poetic songs. Rodriguez's first two albums, Cold Fact and Coming from Reality, received good critical reviews but they bombed, and the singer with the melancholic delivery vanished from the public eye.

Years later, during the apartheid days of South Africa, a copy of Cold Fact found its way into the country and Rodriguez quickly became the singer of a generation. Not Elvis, not the Beatles, not Dylan. Rodriguez. His earnest, clear-eyed songs became the soundtrack for many white middle-class South African youths, expressing their anger toward a country that was keeping the black population under the boot of state-sponsored racism and violence. Half-a-million copies of his records were bought in South Africa, though no one knew where Rodriguez was. Rumors abounded, however, that the mysterious singer killed himself, grotesquely setting himself on fire in front of an audience.

Searching for Sugar Man's director, Malik Bendjelloul, was likewise intrigued by the mystery surrounding Rodriguez and sought him out. Since the documentary is set up as a revelation story, it would be wrong to say too much, other than what starts out as a sad recollection of a career that never fulfilled its promise, remarkably turns into something joyful. The movie is a mix of interviews with Rodriguez's old producers and associates, obsessed South African fans and eventually with the humble man himself, whose hard life is sketched out in a poorly executed interview. Rodriguez's tale is a fascinating one, and Bendjelloul clearly captures the emotional pull of it, but he also simplifies it for his own artistic benefit. He doesn't really get the complexity of Rodriguez's life. Nevertheless, Rodriguez's story is a testament of struggle and hope. It's just that the reality is more interesting than the legend Bendjelloul purposefully contrives in order to make his own name.