Katy Perry Orlando Bloom split may be the gossip hook, but the actual news on September 2, 2026, is Katy Perry: The Lifetimes Tour – Live from Paris, a 31-song IMAX concert film that captures Perry in full performance mode. Sara Michelle Fetters reviewed the two-hour release as a document of scale, stamina, and a singer who is plainly doing the work live.
Fetters opens with a blunt read on Perry: “I have an affinity for Katy Perry.” She adds, “I’m not remotely above humming along happily to several of her songs.” That matters because the review is not written from distance; it weighs Perry’s reach, then tests the concert film against the demands of an IMAX presentation.
Paul Dugdale’s 31 Numbers
Paul Dugdale directs a show built around 31 numbers, and that count is the spine of the film. Perry’s set opens with “Artificial” and “Chained to the Rhythm,” then moves through “California Gurls,” which the review calls goofy, and an emotional “Not Like the Movies.”
The structure is more than a greatest-hits reel. The film turns the concert into a sustained performance package, with Perry bringing four audience members to the stage and the Parisian stadium crowd reacting vociferously. For a concert film, that crowd response is part of the product; it tells viewers this was built as a live event first, not a studio-shaped replay.
IMAX, Live Singing, Airborne Harness
Fetters says Perry is actually singing and not lip-syncing along to her biggest hits, and that is the film’s clearest selling point. “There’s something endearing about watching a talented performer try not to gasp for air so she can finish a lyric while somersaulting backward in an airborne harness across a glowing infinity symbol stage,” she writes.
The reviewer also points to “Nirvana” as outstanding and says the climax comes with “Wonder” followed by “Firework.” That sequence gives the film a clean arc: spectacle, release, then the songs that close the room. The live vocal strain is part of the appeal, especially in IMAX, where any wobble in breath or movement reads as part of the performance rather than a flaw to hide.
Schmaltz and Charm
Fetters also keeps the review from turning into a pure endorsement. She says the best moments come when Perry lets her guard down and embraces the Paris audience, but she also finds much of the spectacle too schmaltzy in its glittery excess. “She makes me smile,” Fetters writes, and that line sits right next to the review’s sharper edge about the production’s candy-coated excess.
“Yes. That’s the plot of the concert. I didn’t make that up,” Fetters writes after describing the mechanized chanteuse warrior and the rogue A.I. that has kidnapped all of the world’s butterflies. The open question now is not the concept, but reach: whether the IMAX concert film travels widely beyond this review and how much room it has with audiences beyond Perry’s core crowd.
