page_title: The Girlie Show: Live Down Under
section_title: Critical reception
hierarchical_section_title: The Girlie Show: Live Down Under / Reception / Critical reception
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo taken during one of the concerts in 1993
context_page_description: The Girlie Show: Live Down Under is a video album by American singer-songwriter Madonna. It was released by Warner-Reprise Video, Maverick and Sire Records on April 26, 1994 on VHS and Laserdisc formats and included the concert that took place on November 19, 1993 at Sydney Cricket Ground from The Girlie Show World Tour. The concert had previously been broadcast on American network HBO as Madonna Live Down Under: The Girlie Show and became the channel's most-watched original program of the year. The video received generally positive reviews from music critics, and reached numbers one and three in the music videos charts in the United Kingdom and the United States, respectively. At the 37th Grammy Awards, it was nominated for Best Long Form Music Video. It was released on DVD in 1998, becoming one of the first music videos to be published in this format.
context_section_description: The video received generally positive reviews from music critics. The Hollywood Reporter deemed it a "showcase not only for the superstar's prodigious talents as a singer and dancer, but also for her ability to orchestrate and film an appropriately mammoth production". The New Yorker praised the release for being "great entertainment" and highlighted the singer's stage presence as "a wonder of our times". Dominic Griffin, from Variety, praised the way the video was shot, and wrote that the show "never once let up", highlighting Madonna's "great energy and amazing stamina throughout". Heather Phares from AllMusic gave the release four out of five stars. Although she criticized the lack of additional features, she praised the video, sound and the "dynamic" performances; she concluded it was a "decent presentation of a spectacular, two-hour concert, and worthwhile for fans looking to upgrade from the laser disc or VHS versions". 
  Billboard's Catherine Applefield called it a "revue-style-concert-cum-fashion show that parades itself in grand fashion" which "occasionally degenerates into a silly, sexpot exercise". She said it was a release that "fans will proudly purchase". In a more negative review, Jeff Gordiner from Entertainment Weekly wrote that the video "is the point where shock turns to schlock", and criticized the singer's "goosestep precision", which he felt made the concert "as sexy as a swig of Pepto-Bismol". For Richard Cromelin from the Los Angeles Times, "Mark Miceli’s direction seemed to be winging it, alternating between spectacle and intimacy. [...] Instead of conveying the magic, it documented the labor, and failed to unify [Madonna's] succession of personas into a coherent whole". At the 37th Grammy Awards, it was nominated for Best Long Form Music Video, but lost to U2's Zoo TV: Live from Sydney.
caption: Madonna's performance of "Vogue" on the tour was deemed "eye-popping" by Billboard's Catherine Applefield.[16]
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